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THE RUSSIAN JEW 

IN THE 

UNITED STATES ^^'^ 



STUDIES OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN NEW YORK, 

PHILADELPHIA, AND CHICAGO, WITH A 

DESCRIPTION OF RURAL 

SETTLEMENTS 



PLANNED AND EDITED BY 

CHARLES S. BERNHEIMER, Ph.D. 



PHILADELPHIA 
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 

1905 



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Copyright, 1905 
BY CHARLES S. BERNHEIMER 



PREFACE 

There have been a number of attempts to portray the 
life of the newly arrived immigrant Jew, the Jew who has 
come from Russia, Austria-Hungary, Roumania, who has 
been settling in the last three decades among Anglo-Saxon 
peoples in English and American communities, who has 
contributed an interesting admixture to the strange com- 
binations that are found where English law and custom 
and American institutions have permitted a freer develop- 
ment than can be found among most of the nations of the 
Eastern hemisphere. In his masterpiece, " Children of 
the Ghetto, ' ' Israel Zangwill has painted with most skilful 
brush Jewish characters from eastern Europe transplanted 
into an English soil, so that we see their lif elikeness with all 
its intensity, their communal activity with all its warmth and 
poesy, as well as its hardness and struggle. Other writers 
have done minor work in the form of story or character 
sketch, with the purpose of presenting some idea of the 
life, the thought, and the customs of these people. There 
have, too, appeared some more scientific studies, like '' The 
Jew in London." The present work, which was projected 
before the last mentioned, is intended to present the rise 
and development of the Russian Jews who have come to 
the United States during the past twenty-odd years, to 
show the qualities they brought with them, to present the 
facts as to their adjustment to the conditions here, and 
to look a little into the future. 

It has been deemed desirable by the editor that the 
detailed studies should be undertaken chiefly with refer- 
ence to three leading cities of the United States, — New 
York, Philadelphia and Chicago, embracing the larger 
portion of this Jewish immigrant population, and that 
there should be included, in addition, a description of the 
leading rural communities and the work of distribution 
from large centres of population. The division into various 
subjects is somewhat arbitrary and at times the lines of 
investigation overlap ; yet for practical purposes the plan 

5 



6 PREFACE 

has served very well. The results of the studies in the 
three cities are in the nature of cumulative evidence, and 
it is thought that a broader character has been given to 
the investigations by obtaining the information from three 
independent communities. The editor realizes that in such 
a mosaic there must be some lack of unity. Notwithstand- 
ing somewhat divergent opinions, however, there has been 
on the whole a remarkable accord as to the facts, their 
underlying and surrounding causes, and their probable 
consequences. 

The editor is indebted to Miss Emily W. Dinwiddle and 
David W. Amram, Esq., for assistance in preparing the 
manuscript for press, and to the several contributors whose 
generous co-operation has made the volume possible. 

Charles S. Bernheimer. 

Philadelphia, March 15, 1905. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 5 

I INTRODUCTORY 

(A) Elements of the Jewish Population in the United 

States Henrietta Szold 9 

(B) The Jew in Russia Peter Wiernik 18 

(C) The Russian Jew in the United States 

Abraham Cahan 32 

II GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

(A) New York Milton Reizenstein 41 

(B) Philadelphia Charles S. Bernheimer 51 

(C) Chicago Philip Davis 57 

III PHILANTHROPY 

(A) New York Lee K. Frankel 61 

{B) Philadelphia Louis E. Levy 75 

(C) Chicago Minnie F. Low 87 

IV ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

(A) New York Isaac M. Rubinow 101 

(B) Philadelphia Charles S. Bernheimer 122 

(C) Chicago Abraham Bisno 135 

V RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

(A) New York Louis Lipsky 147 

(B) Philadelphia Julius H. Greenstone 157 

(C) Chicago Mrs. Benjamin Davis 172 

VI EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

(A) New York J. K. Paulding 183 

(B) Philadelphia Charles S. Bernheimer 200 

(C) Chicago Philip Davis 211 

7 



8 ' CONTENTS 

VII AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

{A) New York A. H. Fromenson 221 

{B) Philadelphia 

Mrs. Simon N. (Charlotte Kimball) Patten 233 

(C) Chicago I. K. Friedman 249 

VIII POLITICS 

{A) New York Emanuel Hertz 255 

{B) Philadelphia Charles S. Bernheimer 270 

(C) Chicago Elijah N. Zoline 277 

IX HEALTH AND SANITATION 

{A) New York Maurice Fishberg 281 

{B) Philadelphia Charles S. Bernheimer 304 

f^C) Chicago Kate Levy 318 

X LAW AND LITIGATION 

U) New York 

1 Walter Scott Andrews 335 

2 Adam Wiener 344 

{B) Philadelphia Isaac Hassler 351 

(C) Chicago Elijah N. Zoline 360 

XI DISTRIBUTION 

David M. Bressler 365 

XII RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

{A) Eastern States J. G. Lipman 375 

(B) Western States A. R. Levy 392 

XIII CONCLUSIONS 
Charles S. Bernheimer 405 

Reading List 416 

Index 421 

MAPS 

New York — Lower East Side 42 

Philadelphia — Southeastern Section 50 

Chicago — West Side 56 



I 

INTKODUCTOEY 



(A) ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULA- 
TION IN THE UNITED STATES 

By Henrietta Szold 

Secretary Publication Committee 
Jewish Publication Society of America 



(B) THE JEW IN EUSSIA 
By Peter Wiernik 

Editorial Writer Jewish Morning Journal, New York City 



(C) THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED 
STATES 

By Abraham Cahan 

Editor Vorwdrts, New York City 
Author of " The White Terror and the Red " 



INTRODUCTORY 

(A) ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULATION IN 
THE UNITED STATES 

Cutting down through two centuries and a half of 
American Jewish history lays bare three distinctly marked 
strata of population : the Spanish-Portuguese, the German, 
and the Russian. This apparently presents a simple study 
in population, all the simpler as the German stream of 
immigration did not flov/ in until the Sephardic settle- 
ment had had ample time and opportunity to work out 
its potentialities. To a less degree, the same exclusive 
dominance was granted the German Jew during his shorter 
period, coextensive, roughly speaking, with the nineteenth 
century. But on closer examination the problem is not 
so simple. Or, to put it in other words, the influences 
exerted by each of the three elements of the Jewish popu- 
lation of the United States are subtler, more varied, de- 
pendent upon a greater number of constituent factors, than 
appears from their bare enumeration. 

The Spanish-Portuguese population was not a unit. 
Some of its members came to the American colonies direct 
from Portugal; others came after residence in Holland, 
or in Holland and England ; others again by way of Brazil 
or the Dutch colonies in South America and the French 
colonies in the West Indies. Such wanderings betoken 
an adventurous spirit and a history of romantic episode, 
which, in turn, indicate differentiated experiences, varied 
opinions, and a broad outlook upon affairs, with pliant 
ability to grasp and utilize a situation, however new and 
unexpected. Paradoxical as it may seem, the very cos- 
mopolitanism and variety of their experiences were calcu- 
lated to weld them into a single community. Their secular 
needs and ambitions were so comprehensive and diversi- 
fied as to give full scope to their cultivated and tried 
powers. In their Jewish life they could be content to sink 
differences, and so to the outsider they had the appearance 

10 



ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULATION 11 

of a homogeneous body. That does not necessarily imply 
perfect harmony or stagnancy in the Sephardic congrega- 
tions. The vestry rooms were the scenes of lively discus- 
sions that inflicted heart-burning, and caused recrimina- 
tions. But whatever may have convulsed the small 
community from within, to the world, in spite of its divers 
origins, it presented a solid front. 

The aspect changed completely with the advent of the 
German Jewish immigrant. That a deep gulf yawned be- 
tween the Sephardic and Ashkenazic sections of the Jew- 
ish community, was but a repetition of Jewish history 
elsewhere. It was equally a repetition of the course of 
Jewish history elsewhere that this division should exist 
in spite of the fact that in a number of well-known in- 
stances the straggling immigrants from Germany, arriving 
from the middle or perhaps the beginning of the eighteenth 
century to its close, became the very backbone and sinew 
of the congregation of older establishment, adopting its 
ritual and customs, and intermarrying with its sons and 
daughters. But when the stream of German immigra- 
tion became more steady, as it did in the early years of 
the nineteenth century, and was reinforced by Polish- 
Dutch and Dutch-English tributaries, a new phase de- 
veloped. The small Sephardic communities, in defense 
of their own individuality, could not, and, by reason of 
their hidalgo pride, would not, continue to absorb the new 
element. On the other hand, the prominent, useful indi- 
viduals of the German section felt the propriety of devot- 
ing themselves to the needs of their countrymen. 

The separation between the German and the Sephardic 
community, then, displays no features peculiar to Ameri- 
can conditions. But the splitting up of the German com- 
munity from within is of importance in the development 
of American Jewish life. Coming, for the greater part, 
direct from the villages of South and of North Germany, 
the immigrants arrived fully panoplied in their provincial- 
ism. The peculiarities of ritual and custom developed 
under the influence of German and Dutch particularism 
were dearer to their hearts than the great underlying prin- 
ciples. This is a statement of fact, not a criticism, cer- 
tainly not derogatory criticism, for the fulness of com- 
munal activity and emotion manifests itself through 
Jewish ceremonial, and not in speculation, which is the 
prerogative reserved for the few. Congregations were 



12 • INTRODUCTORY 

naturally formed according to propinquity in the Old 
World. However, the principle of close fellowship be- 
tween '' Landsleute " soon, in the face of common trials 
and common problems, lost whatever rigidity it may have 
possessed, and ceded first place to a stronger reason operat- 
ing in the direction of division of forces. The sprinkling 
of immigrants from the German cities, whose horizon was 
wider, and whose less simple experience might have tended 
to level differences, as in the case of the Sephardim, 
served to introduce a new element of separation. They 
transplanted to America the German reform agitation. 
The Charleston Sephardic congregation had, to be sure, 
divided upon the question of innovations, but as a move- 
ment reform was directed by the German Jews. Thus, 
both the secular and the religious past of the German 
immigrants inclined them to fall into autonomous groups, 
determined by their various German origins geographic- 
ally considered, and by their attitude toward orthodoxy and 
reform. 

These provincial and disintegrating features prevailed 
in communal organization until after the great German 
immigration of 1848, which imported charity problems, 
greater numbers, more cultivated intelligences, and the 
alertness of thought characteristic of world-moving events, 
all of them factors conducive to union in the face of 
differences of faith and living. 

The communal organization effected by the German- 
Jewish immigration of 1848 and the twenty years follow- 
ing, was considerably promoted by smaller streams of 
Ashkenazic, though not specifically German, origin. Amer- 
ica began to draw forces from the centres of Jewish 
population farther and farther east. From the first years 
of Ashkenazic immigration, probably a little before the 
middle and possibly at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, there had been a slight, an almost infinitesimal 
infusion of Polish and Bohemian elements. After Kos- 
suth's revolution, with its profound stirring up of the 
Jewish community, and, again, after Polish national enthu- 
siasm flamed up in the early sixties promising emancipa- 
tion to the Jew, Hungarian, Bohemian, Moravian, and 
Polish Jews came to America in perceptible numbers, as a 
result of the general agitation, forming a contingent which 
the historian can disregard only at his peril. 

These smaller currents of Ashkenazic influence served 



ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULATION 13 

a purpose. The Sephardic tradition was permeated with 
memories of medieval Jewish scholarship and literary- 
achievement, and the cradle of modern Jewish science, of 
the Wissenschaft des Judenthums, stood in Germany, the 
birthplace of the larger number of Jews in the United 
States. Yet, at the time when Hungarian and Polish 
Jews entered into the complex of American-Jewish life, 
Jewish learning not only was in a bad way in America, 
but it did not even form part of American- Jewish con- 
sciousness as a separate and distinct field of Jewish activ- 
ity. The making of communities, the establishment of 
charitable societies, the adjustment of fresh generations 
of immigrants to new economic conditions, occupied the 
whole time of the leaders of the people. Such feeble be- 
ginnings of educational activity as were called into being 
by heroic, advanced effort bore no faint resemblance to 
Jewish learning. The immigrant from eastern Europe, 
if not himself a scholar, at least had an appreciation 
of Jewish scholarship. His close communal organization 
at home had borne in upon his mind a vivid realization of 
how vitally Jewish science is connected with Jewish life. 
His religious conformity was based upon a clearer valua- 
tion of reasons and origins than the rigid orthodoxy or 
the reform aspirations of the German Jews. 

This appreciation of Jewish learning on the part of 
Austro-Hungarian and Polish immigrants, and all it im- 
plies with regard to Jewish habits of living, did, indeed, 
make no perceptible change in conditions, the less so as 
the German Jews comprehensively pronounced the doom 
of scorn upon them as '* Hinter Berliner," and so made 
abortive whatever power they had to exercise influence. 
Yet the characteristic distinguishing them from the earlier 
immigrants did not fail of leaving its impress. While 
they were entering congregations as a leaven, and were 
drawing rabbis and teachers from their own countries to 
America, the great Russian catastrophe was approaching. 
When the blow fell, the only preparation the bulk of the 
Jewish population in the United States had had for the 
task of assimilating a large and almost alien element was 
derived from the attitude toward Jewish questions taken 
by its Hungarian and Polish members. They were the 
missing link that in time was to bring to the consciousness 
of the German Jews the kinship existing between them- 
selves and the shoals of immigrants from the Pale. At 



14 INTRODUCTORY 

the time of the influx, they were aware neither of the 
closeness of the tie, nor of the fact that they had long 
had among them living examples of the gradations exist- 
ing in Ashkenazic Judaism. Much as the German Jews 
from Germany differed among themselves in minor cus- 
toms and practices, the temper of their minds with regard 
to Judaism was practically uniform, a statement that em- 
braces the orthodox as well as the reform wing. Here 
they were confronted suddenly, as they first thought, by an 
entirely new development of Jewish thought, and their 
spontaneous impulse was to repudiate it. As the stream 
of Russian immigration continued unabated, facts of 
earlier and of later occurrence co-ordinated themselves, 
and the scorn once poured out upon the '' Polack, " or, 
generically, the '' Hinter Berliner," since it was the only 
channel through which knowledge flowed, brought about 
the first adjustment to the vast problem. The German 
Jews gradually realized that the Hungarians and Poles 
had been but the vanguard of the largest contingent in 
the Jewish army. It was a sobering realization, and it 
summoned from the recesses of the communal mind all 
lessons unconsciously learnt from a distinct and peculiar 
element, once present in small proportions, and now aug- 
mented to a host larger than the German-Jewish detach- 
ment itself — and perhaps more resourceful, materially 
and spiritually. 

The Russian Jewish element defies analysis. With its 
Lithuanian, Volhynian, Bessarabian, and other constituents, 
and its Galician, Polish, and Roumanian tributary streams, 
it is more complex than either of the other two. Besides, 
we are still caught in the eddies and currents of the Rus- 
sian migration, and are being thrown hither and thither 
by it. Hazardous as it is to make generalizations about 
the century just closed, it is after all not illegitimate. 
But to say what the Russian Jew is and can be in America 
is to prophesy the course of the twentieth century. It 
may not be too presumptuous, however, to point out one 
of the ways in which the Russian population promises to 
affect the organization of Judaism in America. 

If the Spanish-Portuguese population contained various 
elements, and if the German population was welded to- 
gether only by the force of circmnstances, the Russian 
population carries the tendency toward grouping and 
segregation to the length of a fault. The Anshe Kowno 



ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULATION 15 

and the Anshe Jitomir and the '' ]\Ien of every Russian 
Hamlet " lead separate existences in the effort to per- 
petuate the home traditions. Subjectively, from the point 
of view of the Russian Jew himself, this is a mistake, how- 
ever pardonable in the circumstances, and a fault, however 
amiable and attractive to the folklore student and the story 
writer. Objectively, it may turn out to be a valuable 
factor in the creation of the Jewish type in America. The 
common welfare will be furthered beyond expression by 
transplanting to the new soil every possible variation of 
the Jewish ideal, as it has been modified in all the coun- 
tries of the Jewish dispersion. Only by retaining ita 
identity for a little while after its arrival in America, 
only by permitting its peculiar, unabridged heritage of 
intellect and feeling to be modified by the " sweetness and 
light " issuing from free American political and social 
institutions, can each group do this service to the Jewish 
community of the future, the Jewish community that shall 
be all Jewish — not Sephardic, not German, not Russian, 
not even American, but simply and solely Jewish. 

For instance, the Chassidistie movement is now repre- 
sented in this country by numerous congregations bearing 
chiefly the title Anshe Sfard. Far removed as American 
Jewry of the nineteenth century was from sympathy with, 
or intellectual appreciation of what the Anshe Sfard stand 
for, there is no telling what a rejuvenating and spiritual- 
izing influence their presence may exert when their con- 
stituents or the children of their constituents enter into 
American life, provided they enter it, not with a careless 
throwing aside of their heirloom, but with full conscious- 
ness of the strength of the strands they are weaving into 
its woof. They may turn out to be the clasp uniting the 
first and the last link in the chain of elements composing 
Judaism in America. Isaac Luria, a mystic of German 
descent, in the sixteenth century modifies the Sephardic 
ritual to suit his Kabbalistic fancy, and his prayer book, 
in turn, satisfies the devout yearnings of the followers of 
the Baal Shem, some of whose descendants, the very Anshe 
Sfard just mentioned, are now engaged in the desperate 
struggle for existence in America. What a pregnant bit 
of history! When once it is understood, it will make for 
solidarity, binding together the Spanish-Portuguese com- 
munity of two hundred and fifty years' standing with the 
latest and humblest comer ! 



16 ^ INTRODUCTORY 

So each group, if its characteristics are studied in the 
light of history, and when once these characteristics are 
toned down by contact with other conceptions of life and 
Judaism, will be a source of strength and completer union. 
The particularism of the German Jew disappeared only 
in the presence of extra-congregational needs and forces; 
the individualism of the Russian Jew will be converted 
into a communal power when he realizes his unifying 
religious mission in Jewish America. 

At present, by reason of their tendency to break up into 
small groups, the Russian Jews are looked upon by their 
patrons and by their own leaders as the most unorganizable 
material among the Jews, who at best are not distinguished 
for the quality of being organizable. To the keener ob- 
server it would appear that the disintegration in Russian- 
Jewish ranks, the almost foolish segregation recklessly in- 
dulged in, is a passing feature of a period of upheaval. 
It is the manifestation of reserve energy that cannot yet 
find an outlet in the secular life, a reaction from workaday 
struggles and anxieties, with a just admixture of desire 
to show self-reliance and initiative. The time is not dis- 
tant when the Russian Jew will have solved the elementary 
problems of American existence, and will be prepared to 
take up the more soul-satisfying pursuits open to the 
politically and intellectually acclimatized citizen. His 
spiritual energies will flow in quieter channels without 
abating a jot of their force and fervor. The differences 
between group and group will have been worn off by 
attrition, and the common ideal will have been disengaged 
as the important rallying-point. 

In this direction Zionism is doing admirable work for 
the Russian Jew in America. It is teaching him the uses 
of co-operation, and of that degree of organization in 
Jewish matters which comports with freedom of spiritual 
development. Under its influence, the Russian Jews will 
give up their separate, somewhat distrustful existence, and 
the separate institutions, doubtless not without educative 
value in this transition period, which they are creating by 
the score in all the larger cities. They will soon reach the 
point at which they will turn for guidance to the history 
of the Germans and of their Sephardic predecessors. 
Eschewing the foolish pride of both, they will emulate the 
dignity and self-respect of the latter, and the sobriety 
and the steadiness of purpose of the former. They will 



ELEMENTS OF THE JEWISH POPULATION 17 

use the institutions created by them as the stock upon 
which to engraft their intenser fervor, their broader Jew- 
ish scholarship, a more enlightened conception of Jewish 
ideals, and a more inclusive interest in Jewish world 
questions. 

The result will be an United Israel in America, respon- 
sive as a body to the calls and aspirations of Israel the 
world over, showing neither rift nor seam where the 
disparate elements have been forged together, and strong 
through the presence of every modification of Jewish char- 
acter, thought, conviction, and ideal. 



(B) THE JEW IN RUSSIA^ 

There are Hebraists who believe that when the poet of 
the captivity made Israel exclaim, " Wo is me that I 
sojourn in Meshech," he had in mind the ancestors of the 
present Russian nation and a country which now forms 
part of Russian territory. This would bring the date 
when Israelite and Muscovite first came in contact back 
to Biblical times. It is, at any rate, not later than the 
eighth or ninth century. In the memorable letter written 
in the tenth century by Joseph, the Jewish king of the 
Khozars, to Chasdai ibn Shaprut, the Jewish diplomatist 
of Abdul-Rahman of Cordova, the Russians are first men- 
tioned in connection with Jewish history, and moreover, 
as adversaries, being enumerated among the nations with 
whom he was constantly at war. The Russians ultimately 
overthrew the Khozar kingdom, and large numbers of 
Khozars and original Jews who were attracted to the 
Jewish state were dispersed in the Russian dominions. 
Jews were also found in the many places which one by one 
fell into Russia's hands in the course of its expansion. 
The aversion of the Russians to allowing Jews to dwell 
among them did not manifest itself apparently at this 
early period. 

There are records of Jewish settlements in Kieff and 
other old towns and of independent communities in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There were also im- 
portant Jewish communities in Little Russia and White 
Russia during the long periods when these provinces 
formed part of the Lithuanian or Polish dominions. 
Many Jews also came to Russia in the wake of the Tatar 
invasion in the thirteenth century, and occupied impor- 
tant positions, mostly as farmers of the revenue, a cir- 
cumstance which contributed much to increase the senti- 
ment against Jews among the Russians. But Russia 
proper, that is, modern, autocratic, Greek Catholic Russia, 
practically never admitted Jews within its boundaries. 

* This article was written prior to the Kishinev riot of 1903. 

18 



THE JEW IN RUSSIA 19 

Ivan IV., " The Terrible," flatly refused the request of 
Sigismund August, King of Poland, to allow Lithuanian 
Jews to trade in Russia. Alexis Michailovitch, the second 
of the Romanoffs, expelled the Jews from Mohilew when 
it fell into his hands. It was, therefore, after the acquisi- 
tion of Lithuania and other parts of dismembered Poland 
that Russia found itself ruling over vast numbers of Jews 
whom it could not easily expel, and it is only since that 
time that the history of the Jews in Russia really com- 
mences. 

The Polish and Lithuanian Jews whom we now call by 
the collective name of Jews of Russia are mostly of Ger- 
man extraction. Little is known of the Jews in Poland 
before the first Crusade at the end of the eleventh century. 
There is every reason to believe, hov^ever, that there were 
Jewish settlements in Poland before that period and that 
its members, like the Jews of early Russia, spoke the Slavic 
language of their Gentile neighbors. But the steady in- 
flux of Jews from Germany after each of the long series 
of persecutions which began in that country with the 
first Crusade brought about a preponderance of the Ger- 
man element among the Jews of Poland, even to the 
extent of forcing the minority to adopt the language of 
the new arrivals. This is not the only instance of a for- 
eign tongue being forced by a great mass of Jewish immi- 
grants on small, indigenous Jewish communities. There 
are Jews in the Barbary states in northern Africa whose 
forefathers came there with their fierce countrymen at 
the time of the Mohammedan invasion, direct from the 
plains and deserts of Arabia. But the numbers of Span- 
ish Jews who followed during the great persecutions of 
the fourteenth century, and after their expulsion at the 
end of the fifteenth century, so overwhelmed them in num- 
bers and intelligence that we now find descendants of 
Arabian tribesmen who never set foot on the Pyrenean 
peninsula using as their mother tongue the corrupt Span- 
ish dialect known as Ladino. So, too, we find in Russia, 
Jews descended from Khozars or from Babylonian Jews 
who came to their present abode by way of Persia and the 
Caucasus, from Turkestan or from Kurdistan, now speak- 
ing the imported mixed German dialect which for want 
of a better name we call Yiddish. The remnants of the 
Russian-speaking and Polish-speaking Jewish communities 
were rooted out during the terrible massacres at the time 



20 . INTRODUCTORY 

of the rising of the Haidomaki, or Cossacks, under Bogdaii 
Chmielnicki in 1648-49, when entire communities were 
exterminated and nearly a quarter million Jews lost their 
lives. Allowing for local variations in the characteristics 
and the dialects of different provinces and for foreign 
influences in the border governments, the Yiddish-speak- 
ing, semi-Germanic, Polish, and Lithuanian Jews that 
came under Russian rule at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury formed an almost homogeneous entity. 
^ This mass was a secluded and degraded middle class 
little in touch with the current of Polish national feeling ; 
for the persecutions and restrictive measures of the last 
two centuries of Polish misrule reduced what was the 
happiest Jewry in Europe during the Middle Ages to the 
lowest depths of servility and stupor. Catharine II. was 
too busy and Paul I. too mad to take important steps to 
solve the Jewish problem, which now became one of the 
great problems of the empire. Alexander I. was the first 
who seriously attempted to do something toward that end. 
He opened to the Jews what little educational facilities 
Russia had at that time, and he is reported to have said 
that he would be well satisfied, indeed, if all that was 
spent under him for Jewish education should contribute 
to the production of one man like Mendelssohn. The good 
monarch did not stop to consider that a nation must first 
be able to produce a Herder, a Lessing, a Kant, or "a 
Lavater before a Mendelssohn could rise in its midst. 
Mendelssohn 's greatness lay not in his philosophy. . That 
part of Poland over which Alexander I. ruled, produced, 
in the eighteenth century, a much profounder metaphysi- 
cian than the sage of Dessau, namely, Salomon Maimon. 
But Mendelssohn, the polite scholar and man of the world, 
living among a nation that had already attained a high 
degree of culture and refinement, had only to teach his 
fellow Jews by example to adjust themselves to the sur- 
rounding circumstances, to learn the language and the 
manners of their Christian neighbors, so as to be fit for 
emancipation. True, it would greatly benefit the Jews 
of Russia if they adopted the Russian language as their 
mother tongue. But here the analogy ends. Bad as the 
condition of the Jews was then and is now — and were it 
even much worse,— it would still be a retrogressive step 
for them to pattern themselves after the Russians, that is, 
to place themselves on their low material or mental level. 



TEE JEW IN RUSSIA 21 

This inferiority of the vast majority of the Russian 
people makes it difficult for outsiders to comprehend and 
for the government to solve the vexatious Jewish problem. 
A foreigner who takes a flying trip to Russia, stops at 
first-class hotels, converses in French with university-bred 
men, and beholds, figuratively speaking, through the win- 
dow of his car or equipage, the thin veneer of civilization 
which can be imported for money, usually reaches the 
conclusion that Russia occupies as high a position in the 
scale of civilization as the United States, for example; 
perhaps a higher one. But the truth is that the Russians 
— that is eighty-five or ninety per cent, of them — are so 
much below everj-thing we know here that we would have 
to go to the illiterate Southern negro for a familiar ex- 
ample of their mental capacity. The Russian may be 
styled the unhappy medium between the Asiatic and 
the European, possessing the low cimning of the former 
without his stoicism and the brutal aggressiveness of the 
latter without his fairness or activity. Left to himself, 
the Russian is a most helpless human being and the willing 
slave of every one who wants to be his master. The per- 
centage of Jews, Germans, Poles, and other non-Russians 
among the artists, scholars, merchants, and manufacturers, 
and even among the government employees of Russia, is so 
large, in spite of all the favors sho^Ti to Russians, and 
all the disadvantages under which the non-Russians have 
to labor, as almost to justify Pobiedonostseff's statement 
that the Jews must be discriminated against because the 
Russians are not able to compete with them on equal terms. 
This is the real cause of the persecutions and of the special 
laws, and it makes improvement of the Jews largely con- 
tingent on the improvement of the condition of the Rus- 
sians. 

Naturally, the government of Russia never admitted 
that it was the Russian and not the Jew who must be 
lifted up in order to bring about a solution of the problem. 
Its policy toward the Jews was, from the beginning, mostly 
in the direction of forcing him out of his natural position 
as the middleman, as the artisan-trader, and of turning 
him, often by the most cruel and violent means, into the 
ranks of the agricultural laborer, the journeyman, and 
the factory hand, positions for which he has no special 
aptitude. The well-meaning, but rather feeble, Alexander 
I. did not accomplish much, and his successor, the iron- 



22 INTRODUCTORY 

willed and energetic Nicholas I., evinced such a strong 
desire to convert the Jews of his dominion to the Greek 
Catholic religion that they looked with suspicion even on 
the efforts he earnestly made in other directions to im- 
prove their condition. His enterprises in behalf of Jewish 
education, which were made through his minister of edu- 
cation, the illustrious Count Ouvaroff, are especially in- 
teresting because they made a lasting impression on the 
development of Russo-Jewish intelligence, and are a fair 
sample of the method by which the Russian government 
deals with the Jews. 

It was evident that the Jews were too much absorbed in 
the study of the Talmud and paid too little attention to 
secular education. But the knowledge of the Talmud in 
those days and, to some extent, even now, brought rich 
rewards in communal distinction and was considered the 
sine qua non of superiority. 'The Jewish opponents of the 
exclusive study of the Talmud were the small and unin- 
fluential circles of maskilim, the devotees of the Men- 
delssohnian enlightenment which penetrated into Russia 
through the efforts of Mendelssohn's numerous Polish and 
Lithuanian pupils late in the eighteenth and early in the 
nineteenth century. These maskilim, '' the friends of 
light, ' ' who believed in the regeneration of Israel by means 
of the knowledge of Hebrew and German, were made 
kno^Ti to Ouvaroff by the late Dr. Lilienthal, who discov- 
ered them while traveling as the agent of the Russian 
government for the purpose of establishing elementary 
schools in the Jewish communities. Ouvaroff sided with 
the maskilim and was so much influenced by their opinions 
of what Russian Jews ought to study that he told Sir 
Moses Montefiore, when the latter visited St. Petersburg 
in 1846, of his efforts *' to force the Jews to study their 
own language." The rabbinical schools or seminaries 
which were founded in Wilna and Zhitomir in 1848 were 
practically managed by the maskilim, and according to 
their ideas. But the new rabbis who were to influence 
the Jews to accept modern ideas and to become more Rus- 
sianized lacked the chief requisite for the rabbinical office 
in Russia, the knowledge of the Talmud. The conserva- 
tive masses never took kindly to these seminaries. The 
graduates, who had a good secular but a poor Jewish edu- 
cation, usually went to the universities and took up other 
professions; only a small portion became rabbis, and none 



THE JEW IN RUSSIA 23 

obtained prominence as Talmudists. The seminaries con- 
tinued for about a quarter century, when they were closed 
because they had failed to accomplish what was expected 
of them. An earlier attempt in Poland failed even more 
completely. The rabbinical school of Warsaw, which 
flourished under the auspices of the maskilim, from 1825 
to 1862, had the unique distinction that not one of its 
pupils ever became a rabbi — unless the * ' Rev. ' ' Christian 
David Ginsburg be considered one. 

But the maskilim were not the only ones instrumental 
in the failure of the rabbinical schools to bring about 
better results. The government, by its efforts to convert 
the Jews to Christianity, by decreeing measures of perse- 
cution, like the expulsion of Jews from places within fifty 
versts of the frontier, at the time when privileges were 
granted to educated Jews, caused the religious masses to 
ioc>k with suspicion on the seminaries as on a veiled agency 
for converting them. The extortionate " candle tax,'* 
which supported the Jewish schools, was also very ob- 
noxious, and helped to make the seminaries hated and 
despised. Still, had the maskilim of the period paid more 
deference to the prejudices of the conservative element, 
and had they recognized the necessity for a successful 
spiritual leader among the Jews of Russia to be a thorough 
Talmudist, the seminaries would most probably in time 
have survived the early prejudices against them, and the 
perplexing system of two rabbis for each community, one 
'' government rabbi, '^ a secular scholar who usually knows 
little or nothing about Judaism, and the other a communal 
rabbi, who is a Talmudist and knows little of worldly 
affairs, could have been dispensed with. The rabbinical 
question is now one of the most vexing that Russian Jewry 
has to contend with, and the closing by the government 
of the celebrated Yeshibah (Academy) of Volosin, in 1892, 
after all its efforts to introduce in it the study of the Rus- 
sian language had failed, augmented, rather than dimin- 
ished, the difficulty. A sort of Chautauquan system of 
educating rabbis introduced by the late Rabbi Isaac 
Elchanan of Kovno, under which the so-called ** Perushim 
of Kovno * ' studied — each by himself — has so far not 
proven very successful. 

However, it was only from the religious point of view 
that the rabbinical seminaries failed to achieve their pur- 
pose. It cannot be denied that they did much good in a 



24 . INTRODUCTORY 

general way. The first fifteen years of the reign of Alex- 
ander II. (1855-1870), the short so-called " Golden Age " 
of the Jews of Russia, offered many opportunities for the 
Jew with a Russian education, and it is no wonder that 
many of the abler pupils chose to enter careers which 
were far more promising than the rabbinate. The preju- 
dice against secular education and the suspicion that it 
leads and is intended to lead to apostasy was still strong, 
when suddenly under the new liberal regulations, brilliant 
prospects for every Jew of ability were opened. When 
the professions and civil service positions were made acces- 
sible to Jews the number of those who had the necessary 
Russian education to be able to avail themselves of the 
newly offered opportunities was comparatively small. 
Then came what may be termed a '' rush " for education, 
but before the new generation had finished its course of 
studies the reaction set in and the opportunities were 
much diminished. However, the impetus then given is 
indicated by the desire for education which is one of the 
chief characteristics of the better class of Russian Jews. 
Parents who were at first opposed to the desires of their 
sons to become educated saw their folly and were com- 
pelled to admit that their conservatism deprived their chil- 
dren of the attainment of the affluence and distinction 
enjoyed by the children of the more lenient or the more 
I^rogressive. 

To obtain education and to enjoy the fruits thereof now 
meant a hard struggle, for only a very small number of 
Jews were admitted to the universities, and few positions 
were open for Jewish graduates. Fathers and mothers 
now seconded their children's desire for education, which 
was the more ardent the more difficult it became to obtain 
it. At present, the poorer classes have almost abandoned 
all hope of having their children educated, being unable 
to incur the expense necessary to secure one of the few 
seats reserved for Jews at the higher institutions of learn- 
ing. It must be remembered that every public favor 
shown or honor conferred on a Jew in Russia reflects credit 
on the entire Jewish community. In Russia, as in all 
countries where the masses are steeped in ignorance, the 
educated classes form a sort of nobility and are considered 
much superior to the common people. The Jews, there- 
fore, take pride in every one of their co-religionists who 
is added to the distinguished class, ftnd this gives a pa- 



THE JEW IN RUSSIA 25 

triotic tinge to the anxiety to become educated and be 
"' an honor to Judaism." This view of education some- 
times makes a ludicrous impression when brought over to 
this country. We often meet here enthusiastic young Rus- 
sian Jews who fail to comprehend the vast difference be- 
tween the circumstances of both countries, and continue 
to act and to speak as if they did a great favor to the 
Jewish community by taking up the study of law or of 
medicine. 

The above incidents in the history of the development 
of knowledge among the Jews of Russia may serve to show 
the haphazard and impractical way in which many proj- 
ects of reform are undertaken in that country and why 
they so often miscarry. It is impossible to attempt within 
the short space allotted to this chapter to give even the 
faintest outline or the briefest resume of the immense 
mass of cruel, foolish, and often contradictory laws and 
regulations enacted by the Russian government in relation 
to the Jews. "Were it even possible to enumerate them, 
but an incorrect impression of the status of the Jews would 
remain, because every official interprets them in his own 
way or chooses to enforce what at the moment suits his 
object or his fancy. One may act in one way, while his 
colleague in a neighboring city may for the same reason 
decide in a diametrically opposite manner. The only 
tendency which may be noticed in the anti-Jewish laws 
is the one mentioned above, to force Jews out of the middle 
class. The law promulgated by Alexander II. in 1865 
permitting Jewish artisans to reside outside of the Pale 
of Settlement in all parts of the empire was probably the 
most beneficient measure ever enacted by Russia in favor 
of the Jews. But it was rendered almost nugatory by the 
later interpretation that the handicraftsman residing out- 
side the Pale is prohibited from '* dealing " in his own 
products, and may only work to order or for other masters. 
The Jew was thus deprived of the possibility of becoming 
the artisan-trader and small merchant-manufacturer of 
Russia, and occupying a position for which he is well 
adapted. The last blow at the Jewish middlemen was 
delivered when the government created the whiskey mo- 
nopoly, taking it into its own hands and thus depriving 
about thirty thousand Jewish, and several times as many 
non-Jewish, families of their means of livelihood. It is 
interesting to note that even the non-Jewish saloon keepers 



26 • INTRODUCTORY 

in Russia were but seldom Russians. The number of 
saloons in the Russian empire is much larger than the 
number of Russians who could keep sober if they happened 
to be the sole proprietors of bottles and barrels of vodka. 
In the localities where Jews are not permitted to engage 
in mercantile pursuits, the liquor business was usually in 
the hands of Germans, Letts, and other non-Russians. 
The liquor monopoly has not proven a success so far, but 
as very few Russians were ruined by it the government 
may well think the experiment worth trying. 

The economic condition of the Jewish masses is probably 
worst in Lithuania. The Jews of this province, who are 
intellectually superior to those in other parts of Russia, 
have the most difficult struggle for existence. The land 
in Lithuania is poor, and the peasants are sunk in the 
lowest depths of ignorance and poverty. With the excep- 
tion of those in Byalistock and a few other unimportant 
manufacturing centres, the province contains no industries 
worth speaking of. The " Litvaks," or Lithuanian Jews, 
are therefore thrown back on their ingenuity and Jewish 
learning for a living. They were the first immigrants 
who came to inner Russia, to Germany, to England, and 
to the United States. They supply the melammedim 
(teachers), the cantors, the schochetim (authorized slaugh- 
terers), and all other sorts of '' reverends " for the Jews 
in the various countries. Probably two-thirds of the Rus- 
sian Jews outside of Russia or in Russia outside of the 
Pale are from Lithuania. The most successful Jews in 
the interior of Russia and at the two capitals come from 
the same region. 

The economic condition of the Jews in Southern Russia, 
which has Odessa as its centre, is better than in Lithuania, 
or, at least, was better before the hard times which have 
prevailed there for the last few years. The fertile soil 
of that part of the country and the extensive commerce^^ of 
Odessa contribute much to the prosperity of the district. 
Bessarabian Jews also had little to complain of until the 
recent famine which devastated the beautiful province. 
In Podolia, Volhynia, and the entire part of the country 
adjacent to the Austrian frontier ignorance and poverty 
go hand in hand. In Courland, where the German influ- 
ence strongly predominates and the Jews are, as a rule, 
highly intelligent, although little acquainted with Jewish 
learning, matters have of late been going from bad to 



THE JEW IN RUSSIA 27 

worse. The Jews of Poland are probably in a better 
economic condition than those of any other part of the 
Russian empire. The government is not so solicitous 
of the welfare of the Polish peasant as it is of that of the 
Russian, and does not " protect " him as much from the 
Jewish exploiter. Thus left to themselves, both the Jews 
and the peasants are much more prosperous than in Rus- 
sia. Up to the latest renewal of the government's attempt 
to Russianize Poland in the most brutal way, Jews could 
acquire farms and country estates and were permitted to 
live in villages. In cities, too, they enjoy more privileges 
than in Russia proper. This does not at all hurt the 
Christian population, and Poland is to-day in a better 
economic condition than most parts of Russia. The exiled 
Jews from Moscow have so developed the industries of 
Poland, especially of Lodz, that the rapid growth of the 
population and wealth of the city strongly remind one of 
some of the most successful American business centres. 

One of the most noteworthy contrasts between the eco- 
nomic condition of Russia and of this country is that 
whereas here extreme poverty is practically confined to 
the large cities and is almost unknown in small towns and 
villages, in Russia it is the reverse. The most abject 
poverty and squalor are to be found in the smaller towns 
and to move to a large city is considered a step forward, 
not only because of the opportunity of acquiring educa- 
tion and experience but also on account of the better eco- 
nomic advantages of the larger localities. The reason for 
this abnormal condition is, in all probability, the general 
poverty of the peasantry, which renders them small buyers, 
and the exorbitant taxation, which is very high in propor- 
tion to the earning and spending capacity of the people, 
and which usually oppresses the rural more than the urban 
population. 

The intellectual condition of the Jews of Russia is, on 
the average, much higher than that of the Russians. There 
are practically no illiterate male Jews, and there is com- 
paratively little illiteracy among the women, which means 
much in a country where the number of illiterates is so 
large. True, many know little more than to read the 
Hebrew prayer book, but the number of those who know 
more, especially in Lithuania, is nevertheless quite consid- 
erable. Talmudic scholars of various degrees of eminence 
abound and are highly respected. The educated Jews, in 



28 • INTEODUCTORY 

the modern sense of the term, may be divided into two 
classes, the maskilim, and those who have the advantage of 
a Russian education. The first are mostly self-taught 
Hebraists with a leaning toward German culture. The 
latter are imbued with the love of the Russian nation and 
its literature and share that almost childish enthusiasm 
and impulsiveness which is characteristic of the Russian 
intelligent youth. In a country like Russia, where only 
a small number are educated and public opinion is not 
crystallized, no natural bond of sympathy exists between 
the higher and the lower classes. The wide gap between 
them causes the latter to appear more brutal and the 
former more intellectual, but in reality they are more 
impractical and given to abstract theorizing. The intelli- 
gent Russian is mostly an extremist in whatever views he 
may happen to entertain, and the Jew, who in all climes 
and under all conditions imitates the Christian, is no ex- 
ception in this respect. The maskil, who is usually in- 
clined to abstractions and is interested in science and 
literature for their own sake, is, as a rule, indifferent to 
the fate of the masses, condescending only to teach those 
who evince a desire to join the aristocracy of learning to 
which he belongs. The Russianized Jew, on the other 
hand, is more often the enthusiastic lover of the low and 
the down-trodden. By taking advantage of the welcome 
reception to all newcomers, given in the circles of the 
extremely radical, irrespective of faith or descent, 
he associates with Nihilists, and then tries, with that con- 
tempt for expediency and practicability which character- 
izes this class, to turn the half -savage, wretched Russian 
laborers into full fledged Socialists, with the result, in most 
cases, that they become more wretched and expose them- 
selves to useless danger. 

This impractical phase of the character of the Russian 
political radical can be traced to the chief source of Rus- 
sia's mental weakness, the imitativeness of its genius; a 
high degree of scholarship and culture is attained by the 
upper classes, because in these matters it is possible to 
adopt foreign standards. The same may be said of the 
real progress Russia is making in the fields of industry 
and, to some extent, of art. Adaptation, adoption, and 
lack of originality are noticeable everywhere. This is why 
Russia is perplexed when it comes to problems which it 
will not or cannot solve according to foreign standards. 



TUE JEW IN RUSSIA 29 

It is the pitiful struggle of the unoriginal mind to assert 
itself in a way beyond its powers which makes the Rus- 
sian's ideals so vague and indefinite. Perceiving that 
everything that is great and good and beautiful comes 
from abroad, the educated Russian is at variance with 
himself as to the question of civilization. He is attracted 
and at the same time repelled by the culture of the '' rot- 
ten West," disliking it as an intruder but being unable to 
do without it or to substitute for it anything originally Rus- 
sian. In spite of all, he remains mentally the slave of West- 
ern Europe, and is much more influenced by its opinions 
and its policies than is commonly supposed. The Rus- 
sians' Pan-slavism and the Russian Jews' Zionism are but 
local manifestations of the German's Moixlspatriotismus 
and the Frenchman's chauvinism. All that is necessary to 
bring about a reaction in favor of more liberal political 
ideas and of better treatment for the Jews is a reaction 
in the same direction in Germany and France, the coun- 
tries which supply intellectual Russia with ideals and 
movements. As this is bound to come before very long, 
in spite of all the evil forebodings of the extreme national- 
ists among our friends or our enemies, the hope of the 
Russian Jew for better times at home is not so far from 
being realized as some pessimists seem to think. The 
autocracy itself came near being modified or rooted out 
before the present wave of reactionary nationalism spread 
over Europe. When it will pass, as others before it have 
passed, and the liberal element will regain ascendancy, the 
condition of the Jews will be much improved. The great 
moral support actively and passively given by Germany, 
France, and Austria to the autocracy and to Jew- 
baiting in Russia is entirely unknown to the intelli- 
gent American to whom " Europe " often means Great 
Britain. Therefore, it is difficult to make him, or even the 
American Jew, believe that the persecutions of the Jews 
are not of a religious nature but a result of reactionary 
conservatism which degenerated into vicious tyranny, and 
for which there is no other remedy than the general ad- 
vancement of liberal ideas in the countries which pretend, 
with some reason, to be more civilized than Russia. Rus- 
sia will certainly follow suit and all its great problems, 
including the Jewish problem, will be nearer solution when 
it will again try to deal with them in that spirit of liberal- 
ism which influenced its actions in the last generation. 



30 INTRODUCTORY 

Meanwhile, the outlook is not very promising. Although 
there can be no doubt of the ultimate prevalence of liberal 
principles, not even the most optimistic will dare to insist 
that their advent is imminent. Perhaps a great war which 
should result in the triumph of a free country would have 
the same beneficent results as the Crimean war, which 
preceded the good tim.es under Alexander II. Until the 
arrival of a more liberal era, migration and emigration 
are the only palliatives. They cannot be considered rem- 
edies, for in spite of the great numbers forced to leave, 
the population of the Jews in the Pale is steadily increas- 
ing. Migration to the interior parts of Eussia, which is 
allowed only to rich merchants and to skilled artisans, and 
is not burdened by the assistance of organized charities 
which give the schnorrer (beggar) an advantage over the 
meritorious, is contributing much to make the Jews and 
the Russians better acquainted, and is preparing both for 
friendlier intercourse under the improved conditions which 
are bound to come. Even now it helps to increase the 
number of Russianized Jews who are to be found in the 
front ranks of the better classes assisting in the noble 
work of advancing . the material and mental interests of 
their country to the best of their abilities. The merchant 
and the mechanic are thus more practical than the enthu- 
siastic student at home or abroad, who disdains the strug- 
gle for bourgeois or capitalistic liberal principles as being 
out of fashion and not sufficiently radical nowadays. The 
Jew, in spite of all restrictions, plays an important part 
in the rapid development of Russia, and when violence 
and malicious persecution will prove, as they have always 
proven, unable to suppress him, he will assume the place 
which belongs to him in the social structure of Russia, 
and which he occupies in all civilized countries. Persecu- 
tion and poverty on the one hand, and mistaken benevo- 
lence on the other, may induce some Jews to become agri- 
cultural or other sorts of menial laborers. But in Russia, 
or out of it, the Jew, with the help of the fortitude, dili- 
gence, sobriety, and economy, which have served him 
through the darkest and bloodiest ages, will rise as soon 
as the opportunity offers itself, and will enter the middle 
and upper classes, to which he naturally belongs. 

In conclusion, let us console ourselves with the knowl- 
edge that although the Jews of Russia suffer terribly, 
they do not suffer alone. All other non-Russian inhabi- 



THE JEW IN RUSSIA 31 

tants are subject to more or less persecution and the entire 
population is oppressed and plundered to an extent which 
an American would consider impossible to endure. The 
only ray of hope at present is Russia's rapid material 
advance. The introduction of railroads and modern meth- 
ods of production are doing much to raise the standard 
of living, to increase the number of the well-to-do and 
intelligent classes, and to make the country at large more 
susceptible to civilizing influences from abroad. When 
once a higher average is reached, Russia will deserve and 
possess a better government than now, and with it will 
come better laws and better treatment alike for Jew and 
Gentile. 



(C) THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES* 

It may not be known that the male Russian and Polish 
Jew can generally read his Hebrew Bible as well as a 
Yiddish newspaper, and that many of the Jewish arrivals 
at the barge office are versed in rabbinical literature, 
not to speak of the large number of those who can read 
and write Russian. When attention is directed to the 
Russian Jew in America, a state of affairs is found which 
still further removes him from the illiterate class, and 
gives him a place among the most ambitious and the 
quickest to learn both the written and the spoken language 
of the adopted country, and among the easiest to be 
assimilated with the population. 

The cry raised by the Russian anti-Semites against the 
backwardness of the Jew in adopting the tongue and the 
manners of his birthplace, in the same breath in which 
they urge the government to close the doors of its schools 
to subjects of the Hebrew faith, reminds one of the hypo- 
critical miser who kept his gate guarded by ferocious dogs, 
and then reproached his destitute neighbor with holding 
himself aloof. This country, where the schools and col- 
leges do not discriminate between Jew and Gentile, has 
quite another tale to tell. The several public evening 
schools of the New York Ghetto, the evening school sup- 
ported from the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and the private 
establishments of a similar character are attended by thou- 
sands of Jewish immigrants, the great majority of whom 
come here absolutely ignorant of the language of their 
native country. Surely nothing can be more inspiring to 
the public-spirited citizen, nothing worthier of the interest 
of the student of immigration, than the sight of a gray- 
haired tailor, a patriarch in appearance, coming, after a 
hard day's work at a sweat-shop, to spell '* cat, mat, rat," 
and to grapple with the difficulties of " th " and ** w." 
Such a spectacle may be seen in scores of the class-rooms 

1 This is largely an article published in the Atlantic Monthly, July, 1898, cor- 
rected with reference to changes since that time. 

32 



THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES 33 

in the schools referred to. Hundreds of educated young 
Hebrews earn their living and often pay their way through 
college by giving private lessons in English in the tene- 
ment houses of the district, — a type of young men and 
women peculiar to the Ghetto. The pupils of these 
private tutors are the same poor, overworked sweat-shop 
" hands " of whom the public hears so much and knows 
so little. A tenement house kitchen turned, after a scanty 
supper, into a class-room, with the head of the family and 
his boarder bent over an English school reader, may per- 
haps claim attention as one of the curiosities of life in a 
great city; in the Jewish quarter, however, it is a common 
spectacle. 

Nor does the tailor or peddler who hires these tutors, 
as a rule, content himself with an elementary knowledge 
of the language of his new home. I know many Jewish 
workmen who before they came here knew not a word of 
Russian, and were ignorant of any book except the Scrip- 
tures, or perhaps the Talmud, but whose range of English 
reading places them on a level with the average college- 
bred American. 

The innumerable Yiddish publications with which the 
Jewish quarter is flooded are also a potent civilizing and 
Americanizing agency. The Russian Jews of New York, 
Philadelphia, and Chicago have within the last twenty 
years created a vast periodical literature which furnishes 
intellectual food not only to themselves but also to their 
brethren in Europe. A feverish literary activity un- 
known among the Jews in Russia, Roumania, and Austria, 
but which has arisen here among the immigrants from 
those countries, educates thousands of ignorant tailors and 
peddlers, lifts their intelligence, facilitates their study of 
English, and opens to them the doors of the English 
library. The five million Jews living under the Czar had 
not a single Yiddish daily paper even when the govern- 
ment allowed such publications, while their fellow country- 
men and co-religionists who have taken up their abode in 
America publish seven dailies (six in New York and one 
in Chicago), not to mention the countless Yiddish weeklies 
and monthlies, and the pamphlets and books which to-day 
make New York the largest Yiddish book market in the 
world. If much that is contained in these publications is 
rather crude, they are in this respect as good — or as bad 
— as a certain class of English novels and periodicals from 



34 , INTRODUCTORY 

which they partly derive their inspiration. On the other 
hand, their readers are sure to find in them a good deal of 
what would be worthy of a more cultivated language. 
They have among their contributors some of the best Yid- 
dish writers in the world, men of undeniable talent, and 
these supply the Jewish slums with popular articles on 
science, on the history and institutions of the adopted 
country, translations from the best literatures of Europe 
and America, as well as original sketches, stories, and 
poems of decided merit. It is sometimes said (usually by 
those who know the Ghetto at second hand) that this un- 
natural development of Yiddish journalism threatens to 
keep the immigrant from an acquaintance with English. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Yiddish 
periodicals are so many preparatory schools from which 
the reader is sooner or later promoted to the English 
newspaper, just as the several Jewish theatres prepare his 
way to the Broadway playhouse, or as the Yiddish lecture 
serves him as a stepping-stone to that English-speaking, 
self-educational society, composed of workingmen who 
have lived a few years in the country, which is another 
characteristic feature of life in the Ghetto. Truly, the 
Jews *' do not rot in their slum, but, rising, pull it up 
after them." 

The only time when Jewish laborers threatened to come 
in serious conflict with the cause of American workingmen 
was during the great 'longshoremen's strike of 1882, at 
the very beginning of the new era in the history of Jewish 
immigration. Ignorant of the meaning of strikes, the 
newcomers blindly allowed themselves to be persuaded by 
representatives of ship-owners to take the places of former 
employees. No sooner, however, had the situation been 
explained to the " scabs " than they abandoned their 
wheelbarrows, amid the applause of the striking Gentiles. 
Since then the Jewish workmen have been among the most 
faithful members of the various trades-unions of the 
country. So far from depressing wages and bringing 
down the standard of living, the Jewish workingman has 
been among the foremost in the struggle for the interests 
of the wage-earning class of the country. If he brings 
with him a lower standard of living, his keen suscepti- 
bilities, his " intellectual avidity," and his '' almost uni- 
versal and certainly commendable desire to improve his 
condition " impel him to raise that standard to the level 



THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES 35 

of his new surroundings. Unlike some of tlie immigrants 
of other nationalities, the Essex Street Jew does not re- 
main here in the same plight in which he came. Poor as 
he is, he strives to live like a civilized man, and the money 
which another workman perhaps might spend on drink and 
sport he devotes to the improvement of his home and the 
education of his children. If ''it may be stated as axio- 
matic that home-builders are good citizens," the Jewish 
immigrant makes a very good citizen indeed. 

I have visited the houses of many American working- 
men, in New England and elsewhere, as well as the resi- 
dences of their Jewish shopmates, and I have found 
scarcely a point of difference. The squalor of the typical 
tenement house of the Ghetto is far more objectionable and 
offensive to the people who are doomed to live in it than 
to those who undertake slumming expeditions as a fad, and 
is entirely due to the same economical conditions which are 
responsibile for the lack of cleanliness in the homes of 
such poor workingmen as are classed among the most 
desirable contribution to the population. The houses of 
the poor Irish laborers who dwell on the outskirts of the 
great New York Ghetto (and they are not worse than the 
houses occupied by the poor Irish families of the West 
Side) are not better, in point of cleanliness, than the resi- 
dences of their Jewish neighbors. The following state- 
ment, which is taken from the report made by the Tene- 
ment House Committee to the Senate and Assembly of the 
State of New York on January 17, 1895, throws light on 
the subject. 

"It is evident," says the committee, '' that there are 
other potent causes besides density of population at work 
to affect the death-rate of the tenement districts, and the 
most obvious one is race or nationality. It will be observed 
at once that the wards showing the greatest house density 
combined with a low death-rate, namely the Tenth and 
Seventh Wards, are very largely populated by Russian and 
Polish Jews. This is, in fact, the Jewish quarter of the 
city. On the other hand, the wards having the highest 
death-rate . . . constitute two of the numerous Italian 
colonies which are distributed through the city. . . . 
The greatest density (57.2 tenants to a house) is in the 
Tenth Ward (almost exclusively occupied by Jews), v\^hich 
also has the lowest death-rate. . . . The low death- 
rates of the Seventh and Tenth Wards are largely accounted 



36 • INTBODUCTORY 

for by the fact previously mentioned, that they are popu- 
lated largely by Russian Jews. ' ' 

To be sure, life in a Tenth Ward tenement house is 
wretched enough, but this has nothing to do with the 
habits and inclinations of its inmates. It is a broad sub- 
ject, one which calls in question the whole economic ar- 
rangement of our time, and of which the sweating system 
— the great curse of the Ghetto — is only one detail. . 

Is the Russian Jew responsible for the sweating system? 
He did not bring it with him. He found it already devel- 
oped here. In its varied forms it exists in other industries 
as well as in the tailoring trades. But far from resigning 
himself to his burden the Jewish tailor is ever struggling 
to shake it from his shoulder. Nor are his efforts futile. 
In many instances the sweat-shop system has been abol- 
ished or its curse mitigated. The sweating system and its 
political ally, the '* ward heeler," are accountable for 
ninety-nine per cent, of whatever vice may be found in the 
Ghetto, and the Jewish tailor is slowly but surely emanci- 
pating himself from both. '' The redemption of the work- 
ers must be effected by the workers themselves " is the 
motto of the two dailies which the Jewish workingmen 
publish for themselves in New York. The recurring tailor 
strikes, whose frequency has been seized upon by the 
'' funny men " of the daily press, are far less droll than 
they are represented to be. Would that the public could 
gain a deeper insight into these struggles than is afforded 
by newspaper reports! Hidden under an uncouth surface 
would be found a great deal of what constitutes the true 
poetrj^ of modern life, — tragedy more heart-rending, ex- 
amples of a heroism more touching, more noble, and more 
thrilling, than anything that the richest imagination of the 
romanticist can invent. While to the outside observer the 
struggles may appear a fruitless repetition of meaningless 
conflicts, they are, like the great labor movement of which 
they are a part, ever marching onward, ever advancing. 

The anti-Semitic assertion that the Jew as a rule avoids 
productive labor, which is pure calumny so far as the Jews 
of Russia, Austria, and Roumania are concerned, would 
certainly be out of place in this country, where so many 
of the Jewish immigrants are among the most diligent 
wage-earners. As to the remainder, it includes, besides a 
large army of poor peddlers, thousands of such " business 
men " as news-dealers and rag-men, whose occupations are 



THE BUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES 37 

scarcely less productive or more agreeable than manual 
labor. 

Farming settlements of Jews have not been very success- 
ful in this country. There are some Jews in Connecticut, 
in New Jersey, and in the Western states, who derive a 
livelihood from agriculture, but the majority of the Jewish 
inmiigrants who took to tilling the soil in the eighties have 
been compelled to sell or to abandon their farms, and to 
join the urban population. But how many American farm- 
ers have met with a similar fate ! This experience is part of 
the same great economic question, and it does not seem to 
have any direct bearing on the peculiar inclinations or dis- 
inclinations of the Hebrew race. It may not be generally 
known that in southern Russia there are many flourishing 
farms which are owned and worked by Jews, although, 
owing to their legal disabilities, the titles are fictitiously 
held by Christians. 

Hundreds of Russian and Polish Jews have been more 
or less successful in business, and the names of several of 
them are to be found on the signs along Broadway. 

The first educated Russian Hebrews to come to this 
country were attracted neither by the American colleges 
nor by the access of their race to a professional career. In 
the minds of some cultured enthusiasts, the general craze 
for shaking off the dust of the native land and seeking 
shelter under the stars and stripes crystallized in the form 
of a solution of the Jewish question. Of the two move- 
ments which were set on foot in 1882 by the Palestinians 
and the Americans, the American movement seemed the 
more successful. Several emigrant parties (the Eternal 
People, New Odessa) were sent out with a view to estab- 
lishing agricultural colonies. The whole Jewish race was 
expected by the Americans to follow suit in joining the 
farming force of the United States, and numbers of Jewish 
students left the Russian universities and gymnasiums to 
enlist in the pioneer parties. All these parties broke up, 
some immediately upon reaching New York, others after 
an abortive attempt to put their plans into practice, 
although in several instances undertakings in the same 
direction have proved partially successful. The would-be 
pioneers were scattered through the Union, v/here they 
serve their brethren as physicians, druggists, dentists, law- 
3^ers, or teachers. 

Only from three to five per cent, of the vacancies in the 



38 INTRODUCTORY 

Russian universities and gymnasiums are open to appli- 
cants of the Mosaic faith. As a consequence, the various 
university towns of Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, 
France, and Austria have each a colony of Husso-Jewish 
pilgrims of learning. The impecunious student, however, 
finds a university course in those countries inaccessible. 
Much more favorable in this respect is the United States, 
where students from among the Jewish immigrants find it 
possible to sustain themselves during their college course 
by some occupation ; and this advantage has to some extent 
made this country the Mecca of that class of young men. 
It is not, however, always the educated young men, the 
graduates of Russian gymnasiums, from whom the Rus- 
sian members at the American colleges are recruited. Not 
to speak of the hundreds of immigrant boys and girls who 
reach the New York City College or the Normal College by 
way of the grammar schools of the Ghetto, there are in 
the colleges of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Bos- 
ton, as well as among the professional men of the Jewish 
colonies, not a few former peddlers or workmen who re- 
ceived their first lessons in the rudimentary branches of 
education within the walls of an American tenement house. 
I was once consulted by an illiterate Jewish peddler of 
thirty-two who was at a loss to choose between a medical 
college and a dry goods store. '' I have saved two thou- 
sand dollars," he said. '' Some friends advise me to go 
into the dry goods business, but I wish to be an educated 
man and live like one." 

The Russian-speaking population is represented also in 
the colleges for women. There are scores of educated 
Russian girls in the sweat-shops, and their life is one of 
direst misery, — of overwork in the shop, and of privations 
at home. 

Politically the Jewish quarter is among the most prom- 
ising districts in the metropolis. The influence of the 
vote-buyer, which is the blight of every poor neighborhood 
in the city, becomes in the Ghetto smaller and smaller. 
There is no method of determining the number of votes 
which are secured for either of the two leading parties 
by any of the several forms of bribery enumerated by Mr. 
James Bryce. 

If some immigrants have not the " adequate conception 
of the significance of our institutions," of which Vice- 
president Fairbanks speaks, it is the American slum poli- 



THE RUSSIAN JEW IN THE UNITED STATES 39 

tician who gives the newcomer lessons in that conception; 
and if it happens to be an object lesson in the form of a 
two-dollar bill and a drink, the political organization which 
depends upon such a mode of " rolling up a big vote " is 
certainly as much to blame as the ignorant bribe-taker. 

The ward heeler is as active in the Ghetto as elsewhere. 
Aided by an army of " workers," which is largely made 
up of the lowest dregs of the neighborhood, he knocks, on 
election day, at the door of every tenement house apart- 
ment, while on the street the vote market goes on in open 
daylight as freely as it did before there was a Parkhurst 
to wage war against a guilty police organization. This 
statement is true of every destitute district, and the Jew- 
ish quarter is no exception to the rule. As was revealed 
by the Lexow committee, some of the leading district 
" bosses " in the great city, including a civil justice, owe 
their power to the political co-operation of criminals and 
women of the street. Unfortunately this is also the case 
with the Jewish neighborhood, where every wretch living 
on the profits of vice, almost without exception, is a mem- 
ber of some political club and an active ** worker " for 
one of the two *' machines," and where, during the cam- 
paign, every disreputable house is turned into an elec- 
tioneering centre. If the Tenth Ward has come to be 
called ^' the Klondike " of the police, so much the worse 
for the parties who are directly responsible for the evil 
which justifies both that appellation and the name of 
*' Tenderloin," which is borne by a more prosperous 
neighborhood than the Ghetto. 

The malady is painful enough, but it is not the guilty 
politician from whom the remedy is to be expected. As to 
the Jewish quarter, the doctrine of self-help is practiced by 
the workingmen politically as well as economically. In 
proportion as the intelligence of the district is raised by 
the thousand and one educational agencies at work, '* the 
many characteristics of the best citizens," the Jews of the 
East Side come to the front, and the power of the corrup- 
tionist wanes. 

The Jewish immigrants look upon the United States 
as their country, and when it engaged in war they did not 
shirk their duty. They contributed three times their 
quota of volunteers to the army, and they had their repre- 
sentatives among the first martyrs of the campaign, two 
of the brave American sailors who were wounded at Car- 



40 * INTRODUCTOBY 

denas and Cienfuegos being the sons of Hebrew immi- 
grants. 

The Russian Jew brings with him the quaint customs of 
a religion full of poetry and of the sources of good citizen- 
ship. The orthodox synagogue is not merely a house of 
prayer; it is an intellectual centre, a mutual aid society, a 
fountain of self-denying altruism, and a literary club, no 
less than a place of worship. The study-rooms of the hun- 
dreds of synagogues, where the good old people of the 
Ghetto come to read and discuss ^' words of law '' as well 
as the events of the day, are crowded every evening in the 
week with poor street peddlers, and with those gray-haired, 
misunderstood sweat-shop hands of whom the public hears 
every time a tailor strike is declared. So few are the joys 
which this world has to spare for those overworked, en- 
feebled victims of *' the inferno of modern times " that 
their religion is to many of them the only thing which 
makes life worth living. In the fervor of prayer or the 
abandon of religious study they forget the grinding pov- 
erty of their homes. Between the walls of the synagogue, 
on the top floor of some ramshackle tenement house, they 
sing beautiful melodies, some of them composed in the 
caves and forests of Spain, where the wandering people 
worshiped the God of their fathers at the risk of their 
lives; and these and the sighs and sobs of the Days of 
Awe, the thrill that passes through the heartbroken talith- 
covered congregation when the shofar blows, the mirth 
which fills the house of God and the tenement homes upon 
the Rejoicing of the Law, the tearful greetings and hum- 
bled peace-makings on Atonement Eve, the mysterious 
light of the Chanuccah (a festival in memory of the 
restoration of the Temple in the time of the Maccabeans) 
candles, the gifts and charities of Purim (a festival com- 
memorating the events in the time of Esther), the joys and 
kingly solemnities of Passover, — all these pervade the at- 
mosphere of the Ghetto with a beauty and a charm without 
which the life of its older residents would often be one of 
unrelieved misery. 



II 

GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE 
POPULATION 



{A) NEW YOEK 
By Milton Reizenstein, Ph. D. 

Superintendent Hebrew Educational Society, Brooklyn 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 
By Chakles S. Bernheimer, Ph. D. 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Philip Davis, A. B. 

Resident Civic Service House, Boston 




^1 



New York 
Lower East Side 



GENERAL ASPECTS OP THE 
POPULATION 

(A) NEW YORK 

There is no other city in the world that contains as many 
Jews as there are in New York. A conservative estimate, 
based upon the police census and the reports of the Board 
of Health, places the total Jewish population of Greater 
New York at about 600,000 persons, which is probably 
less than the actual number. 

The Russian Jews (under which generic name all the 
immigrants from Russia, Roumania, Galicia, Poland and 
other countries of Eastern Europe since 1881, are classed) 
constitute by far the larger portion of this great aggrega- 
tion of Israelites. 

Within a few miles of New York, there are many thou- 
sands more of the chosen people, for there are large settle- 
ments of Russian Jews in Jersey City, Elizabeth, Bayonne, 
Newark, and a census of Jews in New Jersey would prob- 
ably show a surprisingly large number in that state. 

Aside from the Jews distributed more or less thickly all 
over the better residential sections of New York, there are 
several well defined districts whose population is practic- 
ally wholly Jewish. The largest of these is situated on the 
lower east side of the Island and Borough of Manhattan, 
and is easily entitled to be called the Great Ghetto. The 
next largest is the settlement known as Brownsville, which 
lies in the eastern district of the Borough of Brooklyn. 
There is another extensive settlement of Jewdsh immigrants 
on the upper east side of the Borough of ]\Ianhattan in 
the vicinity of One Hundredth Street, and a fourth in the 
northern part of the Borough of Brooklyn, the centre of 
which is on Seigel, ]\Ioore, and Yaret Streets. Each of 
the minor Ghettos has certain peculiarities due to its situa- 
tion, but in any general study of conditions, the student 
need only turn to the Great Ghetto (of whose main fea- 
tures the smaller settlements are, after all, living minia- 



44 GEI^EEAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

tures) in order to get the best possible view of the life 
of the Kiissian Jew in the American metropolis. 

No walls shut in this Ghetto, but once within the Jew- 
ish quarter, one is as conscious of having entered a distinct 
section of the city as one would be if the passage had been 
through massive portals, separating this portion of the 
lower East Side from the non-Jewish districts of New 
York. 

If the entry into the Ghetto has been made from the 
Bowery by way of one of the streets that run eastwardly 
to the river — it may be Broome, Delancey, Rivington, or 
Stanton, — the attention of the observant visitor is at once 
engaged. On both sides of the streets, tower the gloomy, 
dingy tenement houses, built on their long, narrow lots — 
the curse of New York. The peculiar system of cutting 
city lots into sections one hundred feet deep by twenty-five 
feet wide has almost compelled the erection of buildings 
which are bad from every sanitary point of view. It takes 
two or more lots to give space enough to erect a tenement 
house that will give necessary light and air to the residents. 

As a happy offset to the miserable apologies for habitable 
dwellings are the handsome and spacious schoolhouses, 
many of them striking object lessons left by a reform city 
government — still insufficient for the needs of this over- 
crowded quarter, although they greet the eye «very few 
blocks. 

The main Ghetto of New York embraces the Seventh, 
Tenth and Thirteenth "Wards, as well as the southern por- 
tions of sanitary districts A and B of the Seventeenth 
Ward, and of sanitary districts A and C of the Eleventh 
Ward. This area contains about 500 acres, the average 
density being approximately 500 to 600 persons to the 
acre. 

This great Jewish city is bounded on the north by Hous- 
ton Street (although there are now many Russian Jews liv- 
ing north of this point), on the west by the Bowery, and on 
the east and southeast — for the shape of the Ghetto is that 
of a square, with its southeastern corner cut off — by the 
East River. Adjoining the Jewish quarter on the north 
lies ^' Little Germany," whither its present residents 
moved when driven out from Grand and Canal Streets by 
the advent of the Russian Jews, and whence they bid fair 
to be driven again owing to the encroachments of the 
steady streams of Hebrew immigrants, who are still com- 



NEW YORK 45 

ing in thousands from Russia and Roumania direct to New 
York. 

Along the East River front there is still a fringe of 
Irish, Italian, and American-born residents, but otherwise 
the whole five hundred acres are practically solidly in- 
habited by Jews.^ 

East Broadway, which is the main business thoroughfare 
of the quarter, divides the Ghetto into two. The con- 
ditions prevailing in the more southerly portion are 
distinguishable from those of the more northerly half, not 
so much because they are better, but because those prevail- 
ing in the northern section are worse. Generally speak- 
ing, the economic status of those who live in the streets 
to the south of East Broadway is not so bad as that of the 
residents farther to the north, because merchants, manu- 
facturers — some of them doing business on a fairly large 
scale — as well as their clerks and other employees, live in 
the southern section, while in the northern portion are the 
workshops and the badly built and worse kept tenements, 
where thousands upon thousands of workers in the under- 
paid needle industries are housed. 

The streets in the southern portion are wider, too, than 
the thoroughfares further north, and there are more pri- 
vate houses to relieve the congestion which the tenement 
houses, front and rear, cause in the areas in which they are 
most thickly built. The tenements, too, are kept in bet- 
ter condition in the southern half. 

It is in the narrow streets extending to the north from 
East Broadway, that the '' sweater " works and exists. 
The tenement houses in this section are of two main types 
— the old fashioned front and rear tenement, and the mod- 
ern ** dumb-bell double-decker." A prominent architect 
of New York has said that no misfortune that has ever 
come to the metropolis in the way of fire, flood, or pesti- 
lence, has been so disastrous as the way that the city has 
been cut up into long and narrow lots, twenty-five by one 
hundred feet, upon a single one of which it is not possible 
to build a good habitation for many families. 

Owing to the physical limitations of the Island of Man- 

* The Federation of Churches and Christian Workers of New York, in a 
report upon social conditions in the Fourteenth Assembly District, which in- 
cludes the section of New York between Seventh and Fourteenth Street, east 
of Third Avenue (the northern extension of the Bowery) shows 17 per cent, 
of the families in this district are Jewish. The population of the section is 
about 50,000 persons, of whom 20,000, or 40 per cent., are Germans. 



46 GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

hattan, the vastness of the population has caused the value 
of land to rise to enoniious figures. Consequently, in 
order to pay the owner of property a fair return upon his 
investment, it has been found necessaiy to erect houses 
sheltering many families in almost all portions of the city. 
Even then the rents are xery high. Measured by square 
feet of lot space there are few portions of the city where 
such a high rate of rent is paid as in the Great Ghetto. 
Take, for example, a dumb-bell double-decker of the most 
modern t^-pe. Such a house is built with six stories and a 
basement, making practically seven stories, for there are 
stores in the basement, the floor of which is only a few 
feet below the street level. There are four families to 
each floor, and two stores and living rooms for two fam- 
ilies in the basement. The absurdly low rent of $10 per 
month for each apartment or store would bring $3,360 
for the house for the year. This is, however, con- 
siderably less than the actual gross return from such 
houses, which is generally rather over ten per cent, than 
under ten per cent, of the cost. A lot 25 feet by 100 feet 
in the Jewish quarter would cost not less than $20,000, 
and a similar sum, at least, would be required to erect a 
dumb-bell double-decker of the regulation kind. Neverthe- 
less, in spite of these high figures, the rents charged in 
some of these tenements are so exorbitant that in spite of 
losses from non-payment of rentals, a net return of ten 
per cent, or more is realized upon the sums invested. 
Many of the worst tenements are owned by Russian Jews 
themselves, who live within the confines of the Ghetto. 

The mode whereby they acquire title to such valuable 
holdings is this: A house and lot may be worth $-10,000. 
The " owner " can get a loan of at least $28,000 on such 
a piece of property at 4% per cent, or even 4 per cent, 
and then he puts as large a second mortgage as possible 
upon the property, sometimes as much as $7,000, leaving 
the owner to invest only $5,000 of his own money. Of 
course, the risk is entirely his, for in case of disaster he 
would be first to suffer. To offset this disadvantage, he 
sees to it that he secures as much as possible from his 
tenants, giving them as little as possible in return. In 
many cases, the " owner " will net at least $1,000 on his 
house by dint of good management, or 20 per cent, on his 
investment. 

Remark has already been made regarding the crowded 

/ 



NEW TOBK 4!7 

condition of streets and sidewalks in the Jewish quarter. 
This is the natural result of the dense population, for if 
the weather is at all warm, it is almost impossible for the 
residents to remain indoors, and there is no place to go but 
the street. Even in cold weather, the apartments are so 
small that the young people cannot receive their friends 
at home, and the streets, the cafes, the dance halls, or 
other places of amusement become the rallying point for 
social intercourse. Most of the streets of the quarter are 
paved with asphalt, which not only permits of frequent 
and easy cleaning, but also deadens the noises of traffic, 
of which more than enough, however, are left to disturb 
the slumbers of the Ghetto dwellers. The front steps are 
crowded during summer evenings, and also during the 
days when they happen to be on the shady side of the 
street, while during very hot weather in mid-summer, there 
are sleepers on the sidewalks, front steps, fire escapes, and 
roofs, as well as in the parks, on the docks and recreation 
piers, and in all other places where there is opportunity 
for a breath of air. 

There are now a few open play spaces in the quarter 
that are a blessing to the children. In the summer time, 
some of the public schools throw open their yards as play 
grounds, and besides this, the city has opened a number 
of recreation piers along the water front, where sweltering 
humanity may breathe in the revivifying breezes that play 
over the East River upon the warmest days. Further- 
more, the Educational Alliance has opened a roof garden 
for the people upon the top of the building, and there is 
also a garden on the roof of the Alfred Corning Clark 
Neighborhood House, and one on the top of the University 
Settlement. One would naturally draw the conclusion 
from the undesirable conditions that prevail here, owing 
to the overcrowding and defective way in which the houses 
are built, that the mortality would be very high. It is a 
remarkable fact that on the contrary, the death rate is low, 
as is shown in the discussion on Health and Sanitation in 
this volume. 

This seems very favorable, but it takes no account of the 
great amount of sickness and the depressed or exhausted 
vitality of the residents, all of which are part of the 
tremendous arraignment against bad housing and urban 
overcrowding. 

The best part of the social life of the Jewish quarter 



48 GEJ^EBAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

centres, as it should, in the home. The tenement house, 
with its cramped quarters, does the very best it can to 
destroy home life. But its best is not the worst possible. 
For in spite of such physical limitations as the double- 
decker tenement house imposes, and others slightly worse, 
the clans — so many of them as can gather in the ten by 
twelve front room — always assemble to celebrate a bar 
mitzvah (when a Jewish boy is admitted to the faith at 
the age of thirteen years) or a b'rith milah (circumcision). 
The older people do pay visits to their brothers-in-law, or 
other relatives, from time to time. The members of the 
immediate family are close together (more or less neces- 
sarily) all the time they are at home. 

But the young people ! That is a wholly different story. 
The social life for them, alas! does not make the three- 
room apartment the common centre. In the first place, it 
is not conducive to the observance of the convenances to 
have the children put to bed in the same room where 
Rebecca is entertaining Isaac. Yet the children must be 
bedded somewhere, and the other two rooms, one of which 
is the kitchen, are already pre-empted. Therefore, not only 
does Eebecca refrain from receiving Isaac in her home, but 
she is just as unable to entertain Esther or Sarah or Leah. 
Such space as exists, the children and the older members 
of the family occupy, and there is no place wherein the 
young maidens can whisper to each other their little 
secrets and hopes and plans, the discussion of which sweet- 
ens the hours after the toil of the day. 

What is the consequence? There is the street. Crowd- 
ed, too, but there is isolation in such a crowd, and the 
street becomes the common meeting place for man and 
maid. Needless to say, the ethics and etiquette of the 
streets are not elevating, and the degenerating effects are 
not hidden from the eyes of the observant. Such young 
people soon become inoculated with the shallow cynicism of 
the ignorant. The Jewish faith, as they know it, with its 
ceremonies and restrictions, is to them ridiculous and con- 
temptible. ** Pleasure," and not *' duty," being their 
watch-word, all that hampers freedom or self-indulgence 
is a kill-joy to be avoided. Therefore, the dance hall, the 
vaudeville theatre, the card game, the prize fight are places 
of frequent resort. The synagogue, the lecture hall, the 
concert room, the debating club, are not visited to any ex- 
tent by thi& particular portion of Young Israel. 



NEW YORK 49 

There is, on the other hand, a very appreciable number 
of fairly well educated young people, who have left the 
Jewish religion of their orthodox parents. There is a wide 
field for work among these young people. They need a 
leader possessing eloquence and personal magnetism and 
the power of teaching by example the value of a religious 
life as interpreted by the teachings of Judaism in its mod- 
ern form. 



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Philadelphia 
Southeastern Section 



'(B) PHILADELPHIA 

There is something picturesque in the appearance of the 
streets in the southern section of the city, though it may 
not be necessarily attractive to the native who sees but the 
squalor and the dirt that are part of the picture which 
forms itself in the localities where the several nationalities 
and races are congregated. The lower portion of the city 
contains fairly well-defined groups, — Russian Jews, Ital- 
ians, negroes, besides native Americans, Irish, Germans, 
and people from Slavic countries, such as Russians, Poles, 
Lithuanians, and Hungarians, which add to the variegated 
character of the assembly of nations in the city. 

The district to which I shall confine myself chiefly in- 
cludes the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sev- 
enth "Wards of the city of Philadelphia. The area of these 
six wards is 2.322 square miles, ancl, as the total area of the 
city is 129.583 square miles, the district is about one- 
fiftieth of the entire surface of the city. The popula- 
tion of these six wards is 165,385, according to the census 
of 1900. The population of the city is 1,293,697. We 
have, then, one-eighth of the people of the city in an area 
which is but one-fiftieth of the city. The Third Ward is 
the most densely populated in the city, the number of per- 
sons inhabiting it being 24,693, and as its area is but .191 
square mile, this is an average of 129.282 persons to the 
square mile. 

An inquiry into the Russian-Jewish population enables 
me to assume 55,000^ as the number. This is deduced from 

1 The method of the English Educational Department to ascertain the num- 
ber of children of school age is to divide the population by six. This is ap- 
plied by H. Llewellyn Smith, in Booth's " Life and Labor of the People," 
Vol. in, p. 106. Notwithstanding the efforts of truant officers and others 
interested in the education of children, the actual school attendance for 
various reasons, never reaches the total of children of school age, but though 
it may approximate it more closely with Jewish children than with most other 
classes, in all but the higher grades, we cannot absolutely accept the multiple 
of six to obtain the population as other elements vary in the public school 
conditions between this country and Great Britain. Factors which must be 
considered are the greater size of the Russian Jewish families on the one hand 
and, on the other, the greater number of adults in the immigrant population, 
some of whom would not be accounted for in a calculation based merely on 
school attendance. However, these two factors in a measure neutralize each 

51 



52 GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

the fig'ures as to the number of Jewish children attending 
the public schools. The number in schools of the section 
bounded by Spruce Street on the north, Moore Street 
on the south, the Delaware River on the east, and Nine- 
teenth Street on the west, is 11,686 out of a total of 21,515 
pupils. 

The negro population of these lower wards is 18,000 in 
round numbers, according to the United States Census 
statistics. The Italians are assumed to number 28,000, ac- 
cording to the Census. The Christians from Slav countries 
may number between 5,000 and 10,000. The remainder of 
50,000 are Irish, German and native American. 

When the Russian Jewish people first came here, as a 
consequence of the persecutions, they settled in dwellings 
in the lower section, because rents were as cheap there as 
anywhere. With relatives and friends coming year after 
year, and with natural accretions, the population grew and 
grew until now it has become a fair proportion of the 
southeastern section of the city. It has supplanted not 
only the German Jewish and Polish Jewish population, 
which was originally in this section, but it has swarmed into 
Pine and Spruce Streets, formerly occupied by old Phila- 
delphia families. It has, in some cases, made the streets 
more respectable and less dangerous morally. It has even, 
in some instances, displaced Italians, just as Italians have 
displaced some native-born and others of foreign national- 
ities in sections immediately west of the Jewish portions. 
Some of the well-to-do Jews are in the northern portion of 
the section on Spruce and Pine Streets. Lombard is lower- 
grade, especially because of its mixture with the lower-class 
negroes. South Street is a bee-hive of business activity 
among the Jewish people. Parts of Bainbridge Street are 
similarly active. Prom Fitzwater down, for several blocks, 
we find a dividing line at Fifth and Sixth Streets, west of 
which are Italians, and east of which are Russian Jews. 
Below Christian the groupings are less distinct. The Jew- 
ish population has, however, gradually moved down so that 
some may be found as far south as Moore Street. Some 

other. In our statement of more than 11,000 Jewish school children, we un- 
questionably have a large majority of the children between the age of three and 
thirteen. We must, in addition, account for all under the first and over the 
second, apart from those_ not attending school. Let us arbitrarily assume that 
the school children are. in a proportion, approximately one-fifth of the Jewish 
population of the district. This will make the total about 55,000. There are 
probably 15,000 Russian Jews in other sections of the city, making 70,000 
out of a total of approximately 100,000 Jews. 



PHILADELPHIA 53 

well-to-do families have moved to Yv'liarton Street and 
streets running north and south in the neighborhood. Of 
the north and south streets, Fourth contains the most thick- 
ly settled Jewish population. Large numbers may be 
found all the way from Spruce to Reed. Second and 
Third also contain a large Jewish population, especially be- 
tween Pine and Wharton. On Fifth Street, too, it is simi- 
larly predominant as far as Washington Avenue, and on 
Sixth Street as far as Fitzwater. Immediately west of 
the northern portion of the Jewish section are nu- 
merous negroes, and southwest is the section predominantly 
Italian. 

In the northern portion of this down-town district the 
Jewish people mingle with the left-overs of Americans. 
On Spruce Street they are with the so-called better element 
of the Americans. On Bainbridge Street the Italians be- 
gin to take a share. On Fitzwater Street the Italians 
become more emphatic in their claim for attention by 
virtue of their numbers. At Sixth and Fitzwater Streets 
the Jews and Italians may be said to battle for supremacy 
as to numbers. From this corner, west and south, Italians 
are settled in in thick numbers. The main streets they 
inhabit in this neighborhood are Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, 
and Tenth, from Fitzwater Street to Washington Avenue, 
including Catharine, Christian and Carpenter, besides a 
number of smaller streets and alleys. At Fifth and Car- 
penter Streets the Italians again m.eet the Jewish people, 
who are preponderant east of this point. Sometimes a 
block is inhabited in its outer boundaries by one nationality 
chiefly, and in the streets within by another. 

In the lower wards on the Delaware River front, besides 
Irish and American, there are probably at least two thou- 
sand persons from Slavic countries, chiefly Poles, but also 
some Hungarians and Lithuanians. These are largely in a 
block bounded by Lombard Street on the north. Carpenter 
Street on the south, the Delaware River on the east, and 
Third Street on the west. 

The Jewish population has spread north as well as south. 
Along Second Street particularly has there been a move- 
ment north. For a distance of two miles there have been 
streams formed in a narrow line along the eastern side of 
the city. This is indicated, for example, by the population 
around Second and New ]\Iarket Streets, details of whose 
housing and sanitary conditions are given in the study 



54 GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

devoted to this subject.^ So, too, there are clusters around 
Second and Poplar Streets. There is also a settlement in 
Richmond in the northeastern portion of the city. 

Jewish children attend the public schools in large num- 
bers; no nationality down-town is more appreciative of the 
public school system. The result is most gratifying to our 
educational system, and to the adaptability and intellectual 
ability of the Jewish population. The public night schools 
are supplemented by private schools in the teaching of the 
immigrant populations. Meetings, lectures, and discus- 
sions held under the auspices of literary societies, bene- 
ficial organizations and charitable institutions of one sort 
or another, help fill out the intellectual life of the Jewish 
people. 

The intellectual ferment among the Russian Jewish pop- 
ulation finds no counterpart among the other nationalities. 
The educational activities initiated or responded to by them 
are much less prominent. 

A valuable element of the religious life of the orthodox 
portion of the Jewish community is the synagogue. Some 
of the congregations worship in halls or rooms, others in 
buildings of their own.^ To the list of orthodox Jewish 
congregations should be added the Congregation Israel, at 
Fifth and Pine Streets, started from without and intended 
for the less orthodox young people with a service in Hebrew 
and English, and an English sermon. 

From the religious to the social life is not so far a cry 

1 There were 1,294 persons in the district investigated, of which 606, nearly 
half, were Jews. The total number of families was 239, of which 100 were 
Jewish. The total number of houses inspected was 179, in 73 of which the 
occupants were predominantly Jewish. 

- The location of congregations is an index of the localities inhabited by the 
population. Starting with the most northern among the down-town congrega- 
tions they may be enumerated as follows: 

Beth Israel, 417 Pine Street. 

B'nai Zion, 532 Pine Street. 

Tiferes Israel Anshe Zitomir, 620 Addison Street. 

B'nai Jacob, Fifth Street, above Lombard. 

Kesher Israel, 421 Lombard Street. 

B'nai Abraham Anshe Russia, 521 Lombard Street. 

Agudas Achim, 514 S. Third Street. 

Shomre Shaboth, 518 S. Third Street. 

Emunath Israel Oheb Sholem, S. E. Cor. Fifth and Gaskill Streets. 

B'nai Reuben, Sixth and Kater Streets. 

Ahavas Chesed Anshe Shavel, 322 Bainbridge Street. 

B'nai Joseph, 525 Bainbridge Street. 

Ahavas Achim Anshe Nazin, 754 S. Third Street. 

Gomel Chesed Shel Emes, 314 Catharine Street. 

Ahawas Zion, 815 S. Fourth Street. 

Independent Chevra Kadisho, 408 Christian Street. 

B'nai Israel, 922 S. Fourth Street. 

Poel Zodak Seerus Israel, 1021 S. Fifth Street. 



PHILADELPHIA 55 

as may be thought, for with the older people the synagogue 
is the social centre, and many social celebrations still occur 
in connection with holidays and ceremonies. Social func- 
tions of a public character are balls, Russian tea parties, 
small dances, and musical entertainments given by one or 
another of the societies. 

Whatever cases of charity among the Jewish people are 
not taken care of by any organization, are referred to the 
United Hebrew Charities. "When the immigrant first ar- 
rives here, if he needs immediate aid or advice, the agent 
of the Association of Jewish Immigrants directs him. The 
Sheltering Home, a Russian Jewish institution, may keep 
him for a few days. Then the employment bureau of the 
Hebrew Charities, or the Baron de Hirsch Fund is brought 
into play, and he is found work. Later, he, or his family, 
may require the services of the hospital, the orphan asylum, 
or the burial society. All are provided for. It is still true 
that Jews do not become public charges as the result of de- 
pendency. 

There is probably no nationality less prone to serious 
crime than the Jewish. It is true, we see evidences of 
juvenile delinquency among the immigrant portion of this 
nationality, and the problem with reference to this is grave, 
but as the conditions which have permitted it to develop 
are to a considerable extent due to the city environment 
of the children, to bad housing and street influences, to the 
absence of sufficient play space, one remedy lies along the 
lines of improving these conditions, which, with the greater 
adaptability of the parents and the people of the neighbor- 
hoods, as they continue here, will modify the evils. 

The Russian Jewish population is, then, a very impor- 
tant element of the southern section of the city in point of 
numbers. Its social and economic relations need not be 
further considered in this place. There can be little ques- 
tion of its activity and progress along various lines, not 
only as compared with other nationalities, in the lower sec- 
tion of the city, but with the population generally. 







Chicago 
West Side 



i 



l(C) CHICAGO 

** Two families," writes Prof. Zueblin iu an article on 
*' The Chicago Ghetto,"^ '^ constituted the Jewish popula-' 
tion of Chicago in 1843," when the first refugees from the 
German persecution found their way to Illinois. In 1848 
a society was chartered under the name Kehillath Anshe 
Maariv (Congregation of the Men of the West). In 1849 
a synagogue was erected on Clark Street between Quincy 
and Jackson. Thus were laid the foundations of German 
Jewry, and, a little later, of German reform Jewry of Chi- 
cago. Russian and orthodox Jewry of Chicago has a later 
origin and perhaps a more dramatic history. 

The few who came before the eighties were unquestiona- 
bly the lighter element of the Russian Jewish communi- 
ties — the chaff, so to speak, driven by the playful winds 
of adventure and gain. These early Russian Jewish set- 
tlers were actuated not so much by the conditions which 
they left behind as by the prospective chances of the new 
land. They resembled more the stray adventurers of a 
newly discovered gold field than an organic group of early 
settlers bound together by strong communal interests. 

It is only when the storm of the so-called '' May Regu- 
lations " of 1882 (and again of 1892) broke upon the 
Russian Jewish communities with the vehemence and 
force of a hurricane that solid parts of these communities 
were moved and carried off to American shores. These 
masses brought with them not merely a dominating desire 
for personal welfare, but also strong social ties. It was 
these natural pre-existing relations which made social life 
and the organization of congenial groups possible. 

Recent additions to Chicago Jewry come from Rouma- 
nia and Bessarabian parts of Russia. The fact of ex- 
treme importance from the American point of view in 
connection with these earlier and later tides of immigra- 
tion is that they all originate in persecution. They have 

* Hull House Maps and Papers, p. 91. 

57 



58 GENEBAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

been unable to get along not because of shiftlessness or 
economic reverses due directly to themselves, but because 
of the action of the government. 

The present size of Chicago Jewry, including all ele- 
ments, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Roumanian, is 
variously estimated. The best judges, however, agree on 
60,000 as being the fairest approximation. These are dis- 
tributed over the whole city area forming colonies at each 
of the four corners — a fact worthy of note in a considera- 
tion of the Chicago Ghetto, which to the minds of some 
people still suggests an iron-barred fence encircling a lim- 
ited area wherein all Jews dwell. 

Chicago Jewry is scattered all over the South Side as 
far as Sixty-third Street, on the East and North-East Side 
up to the Lake, the North- West Side, where it numbers 
nearly 15,000, and finally the West Side where there are 
at least 30,000 Jews, mostly Russian and Polish. 

A more exact idea of the location of the various Jewish 
centres in Chicago may be had by designating the places 
of our foremost synagogues: The Sinai Temple on Twen- 
tieth Street and Indiana Avenue; the Temple Kehillath 
Anshe IMaariv on Thirty-third Street and Indiana Avenue 
and many others on the South Side; the Temple of the 
North Side; Hebrew Congregation, on La Salle Avenue 
and Goethe Street on the North Side; the synagogue of 
Anshe Kenesseth Israel on Clinton and Judd Streets, and 
a host of others on the West Side. 

It is the West Side of Chicago that is commonly called 
the Chicago Ghetto. In fact the city is supposed to have 
two Ghettos, a lesser and a greater. The lesser '' is found 
in the Seventh Ward bounded by Twelfth, Halsted, Fif- 
teenth Streets and Steward Avenue, where ninety per cent, 
of the population are Jews. The greater Ghetto, including 
an area of about a square mile, comprises parts of the 
Nineteenth, Seventh and Eighth Wards, and is bounded 
by Polk Street on the North, Blue Island Avenue on the 
west. Fifteenth Street on the south, and Steward Avenue 
on the east." Roughly speaking, this is almost co-extensive 
with the * * slum district ' ' as defined in the Seventh Special 
Report of the Commissioner of Labor on the Slums of 
Great Cities. It is this Ghetto, then, in the slum of ?. 
great city, which is the home of the great majority of 
Chicago Jews. How it looks to the *' outsider " may best 



CHICAGO 59 

be judged from the following description of Prof. Zueb- 
lin:^ 

^' The physical characteristics of the Ghetto do not dif- 
fer materially from the surrounding districts. The streets 
ma.y be a trifle narrower ; the alleys are no filthier. There 
is only one saloon to ten in the other districts, but the 
screens, side doors, and loafers are of the ubiquitous type ; 
the theatre bills a higher grade of performance than other 
cheap theatres, but checks are given between the acts, 
w^hose users find their way to the bar beneath. The dry 
goods stores have the same ' cheap and nasty ' goods within 
which may be found elsewhere. The race differences are 
subtle; they are not too apparent to the casual observer. 
It is the religious distinction which every one notices, the 
synagogues, the Talmud schools, the ' kosher ' signs on 
the meat markets. Among the dwelling-houses of the 
Ghetto are found the three types which curse the Chicago 
workingman, — the small low, one or two story, ' ' pioneer ' ' 
wooden shanty, erected probably before the street was 
graded, and hence several feet below the street level; the 
brick tenement of three or four stories, with insufficient 
light, bad drainage, no bath, built to obtain the highest 
possible rent for the smallest possible cubic space; and the 
third type, the deadly rear tenement w^th no light in front, 
and with the frightful odors of the dirty alley in the rear, 
too often the workshop of the ' sweater ' as well as the 
home of an excessive population. On the narrow pave- 
ment of the narrow street in front is found the omnipres- 
ent garbage-box, with full measure, pressed down and 
running over. In all but the severest weather, the streets 
swarm with children day and night. On bright days, 
groups of adults join the multitude, especially on Saturday 
and Sunday, or on Jewish holidays. A morning walk im- 
presses one with the density of the population, but an 
evening visit reveals a hive." 

One thing which excites the wonder of the investigator 
is the vitality of the Jew in spite of his living under the 
double curse of slum and Ghetto. The Seventh contains 
the largest Jewish population and the lowest death rate.^ 
The same remarkable vitality as is shown by the low death- 
rate in the ward containing a large Jewish population is 
observed in other Jewish centres, and this vitality, let it be 

1 Hull House Maps and Papers, p. 94. 
-Ibid., p. 96. 



60 GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION 

remembered, is not only ' ' purely physical. ' ' Hand in 
hand with the energy of the body goes an energy of mind 
which is equally challenging, — as a description of the 
various forms of industrial and social activities plainly 
shows. 

Traditionally the Jew is a tradesman. But in this coun- 
try, at least, the Jew's range of industrial activities has 
been wonderfully extended. There are not only merchants 
and manufacturers, not only the familiar tailors and cigar 
makers, but great and ever growing numbers of brick 
layers, carpenters, painters, decorators, and machinists, 
and, in some instances, thoroughly trained engineers, grad- 
uates of prominent technical schools. The Lewis Institute 
and Armour Institute have helped not a little in opening 
up these particular avenues of useful knowledge to the 
Jewish youth. But the institution which is especially 
responsible for a high standard of industrial education is 
the Jewish Training School, situated in the very heart of 
the Ghetto. 

The number of clubs of a more social character indicate 
a welcome departure from the old mode of self-centred 
living among the Jews. Of all the Jewish clubs of Chicago 
to-day, the Standard is the oldest, most prominent and 
most influential. It was organized in 1869. The Lakeside 
is next in prestige, and is but fifteen years younger. These 
and the Unity Club are all situated on the South Side. 
The West Side also has a number of very fine old club 
rooms, as the West Chicago Club, the Lessing Club House, 
the Lasalle Club. The last two are especially responsible 
for the educational leaven on the West Side. Other edu- 
cational agencies are Hull House, the evening schools, the 
Jewish press, the Jewish theatres, and the like. The in- 
tense intellectual life which the Jew leads in the midst of 
all these institutions is only further proof of his enormous 
vitality. The true explanation of this vitality may now be 
suggested : Is it not likely that the Jew possesses qualities 
which are too fine for the slum and Ghetto soil in which 
they are planted, the result being a redoubling of energy 
to overcome a particularly nasty environment? That he 
has not succumbed to the distressing environment is still 
a cause for wonder. 



Ill 

PHILANTHROPY 



(A) NEW YOEK 
By Lee K. Frankel, Ph. D. 

Manager United Hebrew Charities^ "New York City 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

By Louis E. Levy 

President Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants 
Philadelphia 



{C) CHICAGO 
By Minnie F. Low 

Superintendent Bureau of Personal Service, Chicago 



PHILANTHEOPY 

(A) NEW YOEK 

On April 26, 1655, the board of directors of the Dutch 
Yfest India Company wrote to Governor Stiiyvesant as 
follows: '' After many consultations, we have decided 
and resolved upon a certain petition made by said Portu- 
guese Jews, that they shall have permission to sell and 
to trade in New Netherland and to live and remain there, 
provided the poor among them shall not hecome a hurden 
to the company, or to the community, hut he supported hy 
their oiun nation.'^ 

The records of the Department of Charities of the city 
of New York now show that (of a Jewish population ap- 
proximating 700,000 in Greater New York) in the alms- 
house on BlaclvAvell's Island there are twenty-six pauper 
Jews, of whom the majority were blind, idiotic or pos- 
sessed of some peculiar defect which prevented admission 
to existing Jewish charitable institutions. 

"What is true of New York Jews is true of their co- 
religionists everywhere. The Jew has always cared for 
his own poor. 

In our modern day, under more favorable conditions 
and auspices, the Jew has, to some extent, reverted to the 
non-sectarian idea in his philanthropies. Hospitals, as a 
rule, supported and endov/ed by Jews, throw open their 
doors to sufferers irrespective of creed, color or nationality. 
Other instances could be cited of charities, not medical, or- 
ganized along similar lines. Jewish agencies, giving ma- 
terial relief, or to use a better term, those which care for 
the needy in their own homes, in the main confine their 
work to beneficiaries of their faith, without, however, mak- 
ing any rigid distinction. On the other hand, the trend 
of Jewish charity has been in the direction of caring for 
the Jewish poor, solely through Jewish agencies, and with- 
out the intervention or co-operation of other sectarian or 
non-sectarian societies or institutions. Such a condition 

C2 



NEW YORK 63 

of affairs is the resultant of the compulsion of the centuries. 
The task which was at one time assumed of necessity has 
to-day become a proud duty. What in Stuyvesant's day 
was obligatory and mandatory is to-day accepted as a vol- 
untary responsibility. 

If the impoverished Jew requires the interference of his 
wealthier co-religionist, it is because the latter is better 
able to understand his needs and has a peculiar, specialized 
knowledge of a peculiar class of individuals. Were it pos- 
sible for public charities or for non-sectarian private chari- 
ties to grasp the fundamentals of Jewish poverty, to ob- 
tain that keen insight into the modes of living and thought 
of a heterogeneous people whose common meeting-point is 
their religion, an insight so necessary to bring the proper 
forms of relief into play, there is no reason why the poor 
Jew should not be the recipient of the charitable impulse of 
the entire community. The Jew's religion per se is not a 
factor in the solution of his physical needs. It is charac- 
teristic of his history that the greater his poverty and 
distress, the greater has been his religiosity and his stead- 
fastness to his ethical and religious convictions. 

The problem of the Jewish charitable societies of the 
United States to-day is the problem of the care of the 
immigrant. As such, it passes beyond merely local lines. 
In some of its manifestations it is national in character 
and in a few it has an international significance. The fact 
that the large bulk of the needy Jews in the United States 
reside in New York is accidental, and concerns the Jews of 
Denver and San Francisco equally with those of the East- 
ern seaboard cities. In so far the problem is a national 
one. Moreover, to deal intelligently with the question re- 
quires a knowledge of the immigrant's antecedents, the 
impelling motive which brought him to the United States, 
and an acquaintance with his previous environment. And 
here the international phase of the question comes in. 

Roughly speaking, it may be said that there are no Amer- 
ican-born Jewish poor. Of the 10,334 families who applied 
for assistance to the United Hebrew Charities of New York 
during its last fiscal year, 2 per cent, were born in the 
United States. And of these the majority of heads of 
families were of the first generation. Jewish dependents 
who have an ancestry in the United States of more than 
two generations are practically unknown. Nor can it be 
stated that there have ever been enough native-born de- 



64 PHILANTHBOPY 

pendent Jews to make an issue, since the Stuyvesant epi- 
sode. In tlie report of the president of the above society 
for the year 1881, the statement is made that during no 
time since the formation of the society had there been 
less want than during the first six months of the fiscal 
year just ended. It must have been gratifying for those 
present at the meeting to learn that after all the poor in 
the city had been given adequate relief, there was still 
in the society's treasury a comfortable balance of over 
$14,000. During the following year, so large were the 
receipts of the society and so small the demands of the 
regular recipients, that the balance in the treasury at the 
end of the year had swelled to nearly $19,000. 

In the year 1881 began that great wave of emigration 
from eastern Europe, the end of which is not yet. Driven 
by a relentless persecution, which endangered not only their 
homes but frequently their lives, thousands of Jews were 
compelled to flee and to seek new residence on these shores. 
The Russio-Jewish committee which originally undertook 
the work of caring for these immigrants turned it over 
very shortly to the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, which 
came into existence in December, 1881. In one year this 
society spent $250,000, $50,000 less than had been spent by 
the United Hebrew Charities of New York in the seven 
years of its existence. In the first and only annual report of 
the Emigrant Aid Society, its president outlined as tersely 
as possible the efforts that had been made to provide homes 
and occupations for the thousands of fleeing exiles who 
reached these shores during the momentous summer of 
1882. In the month of July the committee spent for board 
and lodging alone over $11,700. Of the herculean efforts 
of the members of the committee, of the sacrifices of time 
and money, the report in its modesty makes but scant men- 
tion. The full history of the Emigrant Aid Society is yet 
to be written. 

With the gradual falling off in immigration, the Emi- 
grant Aid Society went out of existence, and the care of the 
needy emigrants who remained in New York and who 
became impoverished after residence, reverted to the United 
Hebrew Charities. In 1885 immigration again began to 
grow heavier and continued in such numbers that in the 
following five years over 120,000 immigrants arrived at 
Castle Garden. In 1890 the immigration reached the fig- 



NEW YORK 65 

ures 32,321, the largest number ever recorded up to that 
time. 

With all that had been done, the real work of the chari- 
ties was but to begin. In 1891 the religious persecution 
of the Russian Jews reached a climax. In the year ending 
September 30, 62,574 immigrants arrived at New York, of 
whom nearly 40,000 arrived between June and September. 
The entire charitable effort of the New York Jewish com- 
munity was for the time directed out of the ordinary chan- 
nels and applied to the monumental question of caring for 
the arriving Russian Jews. The Baron de Hirsch Fund, 
instead of utilizing its income for its educational work, ap- 
propriated over $67,000 to the United Hebrew Charities 
to assist in the work of the immigration bureau. Over 
$175,000 was spent by the society during this year. In 
September of 1891 it became apparent that there would 
be no cessation to the immigration and that much larger 
funds would be necessary to give anything like adequate 
assistance to the unfortunates who were arriving at the 
rate of 2,000 per week. The enthusiasm which was aroused 
at a banquet tendered to the late Jesse Seligman was util- 
ized in establishing the '' Russian Transportation Fund,'' 
which added over $90,000 to the revenues of the United 
Hebrew Charities and which was given by citizens of New 
York, irrespective of creed. Later in the year, a standing 
committee of the society, known as the Central Russian 
Refugees Committee, was organized and was made up of 
representatives of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the Russian 
Transportation Fund, the United Hebrew Charities, and 
the American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition 
of the Russian Exiles. The last committee was organized 
to secure the co-operation of relief societies in other cities, 
in order that the various European societies who were as- 
sisting the persecuted Russians to emigrate should thor- 
oughly understand the attitude of the New York organi- 
zation. 

The year, October, 1891, to September, 1892, will ever 
be a memorable one in the historj^ of Russian emigration 
and of Jewish philanthropy; 52,134 immigrants arrived 
at the Barge office during that period. The treasurer of 
the United Hebrew Charities paid out the enormous sum 
of $321,311.05, of which $145,200 was spent by the Russian 
Refugees Committee betv/een February and September. 
Like the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, the history of the 



QQ ' PHILANTHROPY 

Central Eiissian Refugees Committee is still to be written. 
At present it is included in the bald statement of a treas- 
urer's report. Should it ever be published, it will tell a 
tale of devotion, of altruistic effort, of sacrifice, of noble 
charitable impulse unparalleled in the history of American 
Judaism. 

Since the year 1881, fully 750,000 Jewish immigrants 
have arrived at the port of New York alone. Of these the 
bulk comprise refugees from Russian and Roumanian per- 
secution, Austrians, and Galicians. They came from coun- 
tries in which many of them lived under conditions of 
appalling poverty. The records of the immigration bu- 
reau show that in material wealth, these immigrants are 
below the average of immigrants from other European 
countries. Due to their previous condition, a percentage 
is illiterate. On the other hand, the number of skilled 
artisans and craftsmen is so large as to be distinctly no- 
ticeable. From the standpoint of dependency, it will be 
of interest to study to what extent this large body of im- 
migrants has added to the dependent and delinquent classes 
of the communities in the United States. The only figures 
that are at hand are those of New York, which are higher 
than would be found in other cities and towns for reasons 
that are obvious. 

In December, 1899, the writer made a study of 1,000 
families who had originally applied to the United Hebrew 
Charities for assistance in October, 1894. Of these 1,000 
applicants it was found that 602 had not applied for as- 
sistance after December, 1894. Of the remainder, 67 fam- 
ilies were dependent on the society to a greater or lesser 
extent in January, 1899. More detailed investigation dis- 
closed the fact that nearly all of these 67 applicants were 
made up of families where the w^age-earner had died, leav- 
ing a widow with small children, or of respectable aged 
and infirm couples unable to be fully self-supporting, or of 
families in which the wage-earner had become incapaciated 
through illness. In other words, after five years over 93 
per cent, of the cases studied were independent of chari- 
table interference. In October, 1904, it was found that 
9nly 23 of the 1,000 families above mentioned were apply- 
ing to the society for assistance. 

While the above study was limited in its scope, and while 
the deduction which can be drawn from it must be ac- 
cepted with reserve^ it is nevertheless typical of Jewis?i 



NEW YORK 67 

charitable conditions. The marked feature in the care of 
the Jewish poor in the United States is the ahnost entire 
absence of the so-called pauper element. Even the twenty- 
three families above mentioned cannot be included in this 
category. Widowhood is the resultant of purely natural 
conditions, and when it afSicts the poor mother with a fam- 
ily, it frequently produces a condition of dependence which 
has in it no characteristics of demoralization. The bright- 
est and most hopeful chapter in the history of Jewish 
charity is the avidity and eagerness with which its bene- 
ficiaries, bereft of the main wage-earner, become self-sup- 
porting and independent as soon as the children are old 
enough to contribute to the family income. 

If there is one cause more than another leading up to 
this condition, it is the absence of the drink evil among 
Jews. The instances in whifch drunkenness lies at the bot- 
tom of Jewish dependency are so infrequent that they may 
be ignored. The matron of the police station in Browns- 
ville, an outlying district of Brooklyn, recently stated that 
in her 12 years' experience, she could not recall a single 
instance of a Jewish woman having been arrested for 
drunkenness. Combined with the absence of this vice, 
there are other virtues engrafted on the Jew for centuries, 
all of which tend to the preservation of his self-respect and 
nis self-esteem. Among these are the love of home, the 
inherent desire to preserve the purity of the family, and 
the remarkable eagerness which he shows for education and 
self-improvement. Poverty with the Jew does not spell 
degeneracy. The history of the Jewish charities in the 
United States demonstrates nothing more forcibly than 
that the Jewish immigrant, be he German, Russian, Rou- 
manian, or Galician, readily adapts himself to his Am^erican 
environment, easily assimilates the customs and language of 
his adopted country, and even though he may temporarily 
require assistance, rapidly becomes independent of chari- 
table interference. The immigrant Jew is frequently pov- 
erty-stricken ; he is rarely a pauper, in the sense in which 
the word is most commonly used. He is not found in the 
besotted, degenerate, hopeless mass of humanity constitut- 
ing the flotsam and jetsam of society, the product of gen- 
erations of vice, crime, and debauchery, which makes up the 
scum of our present civilization. Given the opportunity 
and the proper surroundings, the immigrant Jew will be- 
come a good addition to the body politic, not a menace. 



68 ' PHILANTHROPT 

The work of the United Hebrew Charities of New York 
is typical of similar Jewish organizations throughout the 
United States. Its report for the fiscal year ending Sep- 
tember 30, 1904, shows that 10,334 individuals and families 
applied for assistance. Of these 5,525 had applied for the 
first time. The society grants relief in kind, including 
groceries, clothing, shoes, furniture, etc. There were dis- 
tributed last year 57,535 garments and pieces of furniture. 
The annual disbursements for material relief alone amount 
to over $175,000. Ever since its organization thirty years 
ago, the society has endeavored to uphold the principles of 
organized charity. In some instances it has antedated the 
charity organization societies themselves. We need but 
mention the giving of relief in amounts adequate to make 
the recipient independent of further intervention on the 
part of the relief -giving agency, and the establishment of a 
graded, carefully regulated and supervised system of pen- 
sions covering if necesssary a long period of years. As a 
rule, these pensions are given only to families where the 
wage-earner has died, and where, unless such provision 
were made, no recourse would be left, except the breaking 
up of the family and the commitment of the children to 
orphanages and similar institutions. To obviate the neces- 
sity of such commitment, the United Hebrew Charities 
disburses annually over $41,000 in pensions. In the his- 
tory of the society there is no form of relief which shows 
such good returns for the investment made. 'Jewish fam- 
ilies so supported do not become pauperized; the subsidy 
which is granted enables the surviving parent to devote her 
time to the proper rearing of her children so that they 
may become useful and intelligent citizens. 

A word may be said here on the question of adequate 
relief. In the revulsion which accompanied the indiscrim- 
inate almsgiving of earlier decades, the so-called organ- 
ized charities which resulted therefrom frequently went 
to the other extreme and withheld material relief in the 
fear of its baneful effect on the recipient. Nothing is more 
characteristic of our present-day charities than the gradual 
return to the sound doctrine that material relief is not 
the end desired, but merely a means to the end, and that 
it must be used, if necessary, equally with other forms of re- 
lief, and must be given adequately if at all. Jewish char- 
ity has always upheld this belief. 

'Of all the problems which confront the average charity 



NEW YORK 69 

organization, possibly the most perplexing is the one of the 
family in which the mother must be the wage-earner. The 
kindergarten and the day nursery have by no means solved 
the problem. They are at best but makeshifts in an at- 
tempt to help a situation which has its root in economic and 
industrial conditions. Again, the factory removes the 
mother from her sphere of influence over her children, and 
opens opportunity for the growth of incorrigibility and 
waywardness on the part of the latter. In the hope of 
partially overcoming this difficulty, the United Hebrew 
Charities has for some years conducted a work-room for 
unskilled women in which the latter are taught various 
needle industries, that they may eventually be sufficiently 
accomplished to work in their own homes, and in this fash- 
ion supplement the family income. The amount of such 
work that can be found is limited. More and more, daily, 
the factory is competing with home industry to the exclu- 
sion of the latter. A study has shown that work could 
be obtained for women to do at home in industries such as 
silk-belt making, men's and women's neckwear, garters and 
hose supporters, paper boxes, slip covers for the furniture 
trade, over-gaiters and leggings, dressing sacques, hats and 
caps, flowers and feathers, beaded purses and other bead- 
work, dress shields, incandescent light mantles, embroidery 
and art embroidery, passementerie work, bibs, knit goods, 
etc. 

The sisterhoods in various districts co-operate with the 
United Hebrew Charities. They give material relief, have 
developed day nurseries, kindergartens, clubs and classes 
of various kinds, employment bureaus, mothers' meetings, 
and in fact have become social centres for the poor of 
their neighborhoods. Since a large percentage of the dis- 
tress which is met with is occasioned by illness, medical 
relief of all kinds has been organized. Each district as a 
rule has its physician and its nurse, and where these are 
not at hand, co-operation has been effected with other or- 
ganizations specially equipped for such work. A very re- 
cent development has been the inauguration of district or 
branch offices of the United Hebrew Charities located on 
the East Side of New York in the very heart of the con- 
gested centres. In itself the district office is no novelty. 
The value, however, of the new plan is due to the fact 
that the Boards of Directors of these district organizations 
are made up entirely of residents of the neighborhood and 



70 • PHILANTHROPY 

represent' the descendants of or the original immigrants 
who have come from Russia, Roiimania, or Galicia since 
1881. The value of such co-operation cannot be overesti- 
mated. The knowledge possessed by intelligent men and 
women who are thoroughly in touch with the traditions, 
customs and ambitions of the immigrants who have been 
coming here and who still are coming is much more desir- 
able in determining the right kind of assistance to be given 
than information obtained where there is lack of such 
knowledge. 

In very recent years, the spread of tuberculosis among 
Jew^s has merited the earnest attention of the society, and 
among its other activities it has been a pioneer in devel- 
oping a systematic plan for caring for such tuberculosis 
applicants in their own homes, for whom no provision could 
be made in existing sanatoria. The campaign thus begun 
has been not only charitable, but social. Not only have 
these unfortunates been given food, nourishment and medi- 
cal care to aid them towards recovery, but in addition 
thereto, instruction has been given them in the rudiments 
of sanitation, and in the prevention of infection. It is 
significant that the work of the United Hebrew Charities 
in this field has been followed to some extent by the recent- 
ly organized Committee on Tuberculosis of the Charity Or- 
ganization Society. 

The name '' United Hebrew Charities " as applied to 
the New York organization is somewhat of a misnomer, 
since it does not include all Jewish charitable agencies in 
the city of New York. It would be more proper to speak of 
it as the consolidation of all the purely relief societies which 
existed in New York prior to 1874. Aside from these, there 
are to-day hospitals, orphanages, technical schools for boys 
and girls, trade schools, day nurseries and kindergartens, 
guilds for crippled children, burial societies, loan societies, 
societies for maternity relief, and a goodly number of 
smaller organizations which have been founded by the 
immigrants of the last twenty years. It is estimated that 
there are over one thousand Jevv'ish organizations and so- 
cieties in the city of New York to-day, whose activities to 
a greater or lesser extent are directed along philanthropic 
lines. Practically all of the larger organizations, such as 
the hospitals, work in co-operation with the United Hebrew 
Charities. 

It is an old but true saying that the *' Poor help the 



NEW YORK 71 

poor." Nowhere is this more forcibly illustrated than in 
the New York Ghetto. It is a truth almost axiomatic 
among charity workers that the poor man uses the larger 
charitable institutions at his command only after he has ex- 
hausted the kindness and generosity of his neighbors. For 
this reason, it is difficult to approximate the amount of 
philanthropic effort that the more prosperous Russian Jew 
is making for his less fortunate brethren. Of the Jewish 
congregations at present in New York City the majority are 
chevras (societies) of Russian origin which bury the dead 
and, where possible, give other forms of relief. Besides 
these, there are a number of benefit societies and benevolent 
societies which endeavor to assist their members in need. 
Three societies, however, require more extended mention 
owing to the character of work which they are doing. 
These are the Gemilath Chassodim Society, the Beth Israel 
Hospital, and the Chesed Shel Emeth. 

The Gemilath Chassodim has been in existence since 
1892. Its object is to loan money without interest in sums 
from $5 to $50 to be paid off in weekly installments to any 
deserving individual who can find a sponsor, or in other 
words, who can find a responsible endorser for his note. 
When the society was organized it had a net capital of 
eighty dollars. The society has now a capital of $74,184.32, 
according to its twelfth annual report ending December 31, 
1903, and turned over its capital over four times during 
the year, loaning $320,740 to 13,143 persons. Of the total 
amount loaned, ninety-seven per cent, was repaid by the 
borrowers. The value of such a society in the direction of 
preventive charity can hardly be estimated. In the lan- 
guage of one of the speakers at an annual meeting, the 
Gemilath Chassodim may be likened to a dispensary and 
the United Hebrew Charities to a hospital. In the former, 
mild cases not yet requiring heroic surgical or medical in- 
terference may receive attention. Here, however, the sim- 
ile ends. The dispensary is intended essentially for the 
poor man who has no other means of receiving medical as- 
sistance. The Free Loan Association, by the requirements 
of its constitution, bars the worthy poor man who cannot 
find endorsers and compels him to apply to the United He- 
brew Charities for the relief which he needs. 

The Beth Israel Hospital Association was incorporated 
in 1890 and at present has thirty beds, all of which are 
free. The hospital itself is situated on Jefferson Street, 



72 PHILANTHROPY 

in the heart of the congested district. It occupies an old 
mansion which has been remodeled as far as possible to 
meet the demands of the hospital. So progressive have the 
officers been that the corner-stone of a new hospital, to 
cost in the neighborhood of $200,000, has been laid. This 
institution indicates very strongly the rapid strides that 
are being made by Russian Jews to provide their poor with 
proper facilities for relief. The Beth Israel Hospital was 
organized by the Russian Jewish community and has prac- 
tically been sustained by it. 

The Agudath Acliim Chessed Shel Emeth has been in 
existence for sixteen years. It maintains at present two 
cemeteries, and is prepared to give free burial whenever 
the family of the deceased are not in a position to pay 
therefor. It has buried over twelve thousand persons. 

It is not within the province of this paper to discuss in 
detail the various Jewish charitable institutions which 
New York possesses. Such organizations as the Mount 
Sinai Hospital, the Home for the Aged, the orphan asylums, 
and the various institutions under the De Hirsch founda- 
tions, are too well known to require comment here. Nor do 
they differ in the main from institutions of a similar kind 
that exist in other large centres. There are at present in 
the city of New York, exclusive of congregations and the 
organizations mentioned above, at least seventy-five socie- 
ties which cater to the needs of the dependent poor and 
which can be classed as philanthropic agencies. Among 
these organizations must be included day nurseries, kin- 
dergartens, employment bureaus, fresh air charities, hos- 
pitals, dispensaries, etc., of which only general mention 
can be made. 

The agitation in regard to tenement-house legislation in 
New York is still too fresh in the minds of students of 
this subject to require much further mention here. It 
will be remarked, however, that in the campaign which was 
made to preserve the vital features of the present tenement- 
house law, the Jewish residents on the East Side of New 
York were a unit in demanding that no drastic changes in 
the law be made. Similarly at a recent municipal election, 
it was the citizens and voters of this same district who rose 
en masse and in a campaign that was startling in its 
uniqueness and originality, purged their neighborhood of 
the vices and immorality which existed there. And thi? 
brings us to the point at issue. 



NEW YORK 73 

The danger to morals which lies in overcrowding is due 
primarily to the inability to carry on a natural home life. 
The unit of society after all is the family, and the preserva- 
tion of the latter means the preservation of the social fabric. 
It is not difficult to understand how a people, who through 
the ages have been heralded as the champions of purity in 
the home, have through the conditions under which they 
live, taken on some of the attributes of their surroundings 
and absorbed some of the deteriorating effects of their en- 
vironment. The natural concomitants of overcrowding are 
disease and vice and crime. The Jew's power of assimi- 
lation is proverbial. It was but natural therefore that he, 
along with his Christian neighbor, should be attacked in his 
moral fibre in the overcrowded tenements in which he lived ; 
that he should contract diseases which were new and strange 
to him, and to which he had formerly not been liable. In 
fact his apparent immunity to tuberculosis to-day, in spite 
of conditions, is a medical anomaly. The wonder is that a 
greater percentage of the Jewish population residing in the 
so-called '' Ghetto " of our large cities have not fallen vic- 
tims to the vices and diseases which breed there. The 
concern of the thinking Jew lies in the fact that the per- 
centage of Jewish vice and crime and disease as found 
to-day in our large cities, small as it may be, is nevertheless 
distinctly larger than statistics show to have been the case 
heretofore. 

In the House of Refuge on Randall's Island, there were 
260 Jewish boys and girls in November, 1904. In the Ju- 
venile Asylum there are 262 Jewish children under sixteen 
years of age committed for various misdemeanors. Com- 
pared with the entire Jewish population of the city, the 
number is insignificant, and the ratio will probably be 
found to be considerably lower than that of the general 
population. To the Jewish philanthropist and sociologist, 
there is cause for alarm in these figures, because he sees that 
the crowded life of the streets, the lack of playgrounds and 
breathing spots, the absence of proper home surroundings 
have injurious effects on the Jewish child, to whom the 
simplest legal misdemeanors were in the past unknown. 
And what is true of the child is true of the adult. What- 
ever parasitic poverty may exist among Jews in the United 
States and in particular in New York, whatever percentage 
of criminals and vicious persons may have developed, the 



74 • PHILANTHROPY 

results are in the main due to the overcrowding and con- 
gestion, to which their poverty has subjected them. 

The remedy is plain and simple. Those whom poverty 
and oppression have thrown together in such close prox- 
imity and who are compelled to live under such unnatural 
conditions, must be given the opportunity to settle in lo- 
calities where ample room will be given for normal, physi- 
cal, intellectual, and moral growth. In New York, with 
characteristic insight, many are realizing the impossibility 
of full development in their present restricted environment 
and are taking up residence in the less settled outlying 
section of the city. There is no doubt that the improve- 
ment in transportation facilities, resulting from subways 
and tunnels, will considerably diminish the population of 
the East Side. To effect large results, some comprehensive 
scheme is necessary to relieve the congestion and to pre- 
vent the possibility of a recurrence of this congestion. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

In view of the fact that a much greater number of 
Russian Jews have congregated in New York than in any 
other city in the country it would seem that any general 
study of philanthropic and charitable activity, both as re- 
gards what they accomplish among themselves as well as 
that exerted in their behalf, should properly be made in 
that centre. There are, however, considerations which 
weigh in favor of taking a less congested community as the 
subject of such an analysis, particularly in view of various 
circumstances which obviously affect the conditions in ques- 
tion. 

In certain respects, so apparent as to have received gen- 
eral recognition, Philadelphia is the typical American city. 
It is pre-eminently the city of homes as distinguished 
from dwellings on the tenement plan, which are so marked 
a feature of urban life in Europe and whose American 
counterpart is found in such extreme development in New 
York and to a lesser degree in Chicago. 

In the less crowded condition of the poorer precincts of 
Philadelphia as compared with those of the other large cit- 
ies of the country, with a correspondingly greater latitude 
to the individual affected by this condition, the assimila- 
tive force of American institutions has greater play. Its 
processes are carried out with less hindrance both from 
within and from without; the Ghetto is less constrained 
by the surrounding pressure and therefore less intensified 
within itself. In this light, the Russian Jews in Philadel- 
phia may be regarded as affording a fair index of their 
status and course of development in this country, under 
comparatively normal conditions. 

Our immediate subject, charity, presents indeed but one 
aspect of that development, but it is a phase more essen- 
tially Jewish, perhaps, than any other. For the Jew is 
nothing if not charitable, and as the Russian Jews are 
intensely Jewish, their activity in the field of philanthropic 
endeavor is correspondingly marked. But as Jewish 

75 



76 • PHILANTHROPY 

charity compasses every element of the community we must 
needs, in considering it as regards the Russian Jew, dis- 
tinguish, as already indicated, between that which has been 
and is being done for them by the older settled portion 
of the community and that which is done by them and 
among themselves. 

A proper understanding of the conditions with which we 
have to deal requires a passing glance at the historical 
bearings of the subject. The conditions in general may be 
regarded as dating from 1882, although a considerable 
number of Russians, or rather of Polish and Hungarian 
Jews, had reached here before that time. At that period 
the immigration of Jews from the German states was fast 
declining. It had gone on in considerable though no very 
large numbers from 1820 to 1870. With the diminishing 
needs of the older section of the community, its charitable 
activities were extended in behalf of the later comers and 
its various organizations were either merged in those of 
the latter or were gradually supplanted by them. The 
project of a Jewish Foster Home, first suggested in 1850, 
was realized in 1855. In 1864, the Jewish Hospital was 
organized. In 1868, the Familien Waisen Erziehungs 
Verein, subsequently given its English title. Orphans Guar- 
dians, replaced an earlier chevra (society) which supported 
widows and orphans. In 1869 the sporadic efforts to raise 
charity funds through banquets and balls, which had gone 
on from an early date, were concentrated in a Charity 
Ball Association and in the same year a similar movement 
resulted in a number of the earlier aid societies being com- 
bined in the organization of the United Hebrew Charities. 
In the seventies all these organizations grew to increased 
importance and power for good and were reinforced by 
others, such as the lying-in aid society, Esrath Nashim, 
in 1873, the Rappaport Benevolent Association in 1874, 
and others of a more temporary character. 

Up to this time the number of East European Jews 
settled in Philadelphia was probably less than three thou- 
sand of a total Jewish population of perhaps twelve thou- 
sand. Those who were here had come, a few at a time, 
as part of the normal throng of emigrants from Europe, 
much as the majority of the German Jews had come in the 
previous years almost invariably into circles of relatives 
or friends who awaited them. 

It was in Philadelphia, as it happened, that the first 



PHILADELPHIA 77 

large ship load of Jewish refugees from Eussia landed, 
early in March, 1882. They had a memorable reception. 
Christians of every denomination joined with the Jewish 
people of the city in offering these wanderers a welcome 
to our shores. Special arrangements were made for hous- 
ing, feeding and distributing them, and the entire number, 
aggregating some four hundred souls, were gradually 
placed in a position to help themselves. The belief was at 
first entertained that the anti- Jewish riots which had 
driven these people from their native homes were but a 
passing ebullition of the dregs of the populace. But the 
manifest connivance of the Russian authorities with the 
plundering and murderous rabble and the leniency with 
which the leaders of the mob were treated by the courts of 
justice opened the way for further outrages in all parts 
of the empire. Presently, in May, 1882, the work of the 
rabble was taken up by the government under the provi- 
sions of the notorious May laws. Gradually but steadily 
the severity of these measures was increased until they 
culminated in the widespread official outrages of 1890, 
when Moscow and other large cities in the interior of the 
empire were depopulated of their Jewish citizens and the 
unfortunates herded in the so-called ' ' Jewish Pale ' ' along 
the Western frontiers of the empire. Thence they have 
made their way, those that could find a way, in the only 
direction possible — westward — with little hope of better- 
ment except across the channel in England or across the 
Atlantic in America. And so the comparatively small 
colony of Polish Jews who had previously reached our 
shores was rapidly and abnormally augmented by refugees 
from all portions of the Eussian Empire. 

It was inevitable that under these circumstances the 
existing machinery of charity, ample as it had been for 
all previous needs, should become overwhelmed and all its 
resources should be strained to the extreme. That the 
older and native born Jewish communities were heavily 
burdened, and that they rose to the occasion, is traceable 
in the records of Jewish charities generally, and those 
of Philadelphia may well serve as an example. The ex- 
penditures of the United Hebrew Charities of this city, 
which had been decreasing for some years previous to 
1880, and which, exclusive of costs of administration, had 
fallen to less than $12,000 in that year, rose to $18,000; 
in 1882, to over $20,000; in 1883, to over $22,000; in the 



78 PHILANTHROPY 

years from 1885 to 1890, to fully $31,000; in 1891, and 
under the grievous stress of 1892 to nearly $48,000. In 
1893-1894 the expenditures averaged nearly $40,000 
yearly, and from then to the present the average has been 
$26,000, varying with the number and condition of the new 
arrivals. 

Previous to 1882, the Russians, or as they mostly were 
at that time, the Polish Jews, had formed but a secondary 
factor in the work of the United Hebrew Charities. By 
1884 the proportion of Russian Jews among the applicants 
had reached 75 per cent, and since 1892 there has been 
among these scarcely any other element whatever. 

The records of the Jewish Poster Home reveal similar 
conditions. Up to 1882 the proportion of children of 
Polish or Russian parentage among its inmates was very 
small. In that year the proportion rose to 75 per cent. ; in 
1891 it rose to 91 per cent. — nearly two-thirds of the 
number having been born in Russia; and in 1892 it 
was 92 per cent., but only one-third of them of Russian 
nativity. 

The Orphans' Guardian Society, which places its charges 
in private homes, has found its efforts taken up in a man- 
ner not essentially different from that experienced at the 
Foster Home. 

In 1881 the proportion of East European Jews among 
the patients at the Jewish Hospital was 11.5 per cent. ; in 
1882 it rose to 34 per cent. In the following four years 
the proportion averaged some 24 per cent. ; in the next 
four years about 30 per cent., and in 1891 it rose to 42 per 
cent. 

Another of the older charity societies, the Esrath Nashim, 
or Helping Women, is to be noted in this regard. This 
society was organized in 1873 in aid of lying-in women at 
their homes, and after the year 1882 devoted its efforts 
chiefly to the needs of the refugee immigrants from Rus- 
sia. In 1891 the demands on this charity, as on all others, 
grew beyond the compass of the organization, and the 
society found itself impelled to institute a central estab- 
lishment for the care of its charges. The society was 
reorganized as the Jewish Maternity Association in 1892 
and established near Sixth and Spruce Streets a hospital 
known as the Maternity Home, which has since been ma- 
terially enlarged. In 1893 the patients treated at the hos- 
pital numbered 116, and 15 were treated at their homes. 



PHILADELPHIA 79 

In 1903^ the number of patients was 1,121, of whom 2-44 
were treated at the hospital. A training school for nurses 
was added in 1901, and at the same time a branch of the 
work was inaugurated at Atlantic City as the Jewish 
Seaside Home for invalid mothers and children. This 
branch has been latterly reorganized as a separate society 
and its work considerably enlarged. 

The continuance and growth of the Russian Jewish im- 
migration after 1882 soon brought the community to realize 
the necessity of dealing with its difficulties in the pre- 
ventive as well as palliative sense. In the fall of 1884 a 
movement to this end, originally started by one of the 
earlier refugees, Jacob Judelson, was taken up by the 
*' uptown " community and resulted in the formation of 
the Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants. 
This society was framed with the idea of its continu- 
ance by the Russian Jews themselves, but its work rapidly 
grew beyond the ability of that disturbed element to cope 
with it, and it has since been maintained almost exclusively 
by the efforts of the older section of the community. 

The association was organized, as stated in its constitu- 
tion, *' to remove and lessen the distresses of arriving 
Jewish immigrants and to aid and assist such as, for want 
of acquaintance with the language and laws of the coun- 
try, are in danger of being oppressed; to obtain employ- 
ment for them and in other respects to aid and relieve 
them." 

To this end an agent was engaged to supervise the 
landing of the Jewish immigrants at this port and to guard 
and direct them in their course to their proper destinations. 
At the instance of the association and with the co-operation 
of the late Mahlon H. Dickinson, president of the State 
Board of Charities, its agent was clothed with official au- 
thority by that body, at that time acting as a commission 
of immigration on behalf of the federal government. The 
agent was aided by officers and members of the association 
acting in rotation, and soon the system gave results that 
commended it to all who were cognizant of its workings. 
To further its purposes the association leased a large dwell- 
ing at 931 South Fourth Street, and fitted up its 12 rooms 
with all the requisites of a temporary shelter. An employ- 

1 The number for this year is given in preference to the figures from the 
following report, which contains records for sixteen months to conform to the 
year of the Federation of Jewish Charities. 



80 . PHILANTHROPY 

nient agency was organized and a competent agent was 
placed in charge of the office and the shelter. In 1887 
this lodge was discontinued, the wayfarers being housed 
under contract with responsible Jewish boarding houses. 
At the same time the functions of the employment bureau 
were taken over by the Auxiliary Branch of the United 
Hebrew Charities, which had been specially organized for 
the purpose. In other directions, however, the work of the 
association was largely extended, including the tracing of 
relatives and friends in all sections of the Union for im- 
migrants who sought them in this city, and the recovery 
of baggage waylaid at numerous depots and stopping 
places, from the Russian frontiers to the various ports on 
both sides of the Atlantic. This charity is still active and 
has done much to lessen the miseries of thousands of help- 
less and hapless wayfarers in their troubled course. 

From 1882 to 1904 the number of Jewish immigrants 
at the port of Philadelphia is estimated at about 60,000. 
Of this number the records of the Association for the 
Protection of Jewish Immigrants contain the names of 
the greater part. Other data regarding the newcomers, 
such as the destination to which they were booked, the 
points to which they were finally forwarded, their general 
condition, etc., are also included in these records. The 
annual influx at Philadelphia has varied from about 1,500 
in 1884 and 2,310 in 1886, to 4,984 in 1891 and 5,324 in 
1893, fluctuating since then down to 1,649 in 1899, rising 
to 3,870 in 1900. The renewed proscriptions and more 
widespread expulsions of Jewish citizens which blackened 
the history of Russia in 1891 and 1893 are marked by the 
high figures of the refugee immigration of those years and 
a similar flood tide of Roumanian wickedness and folly is 
indicated in the figures of 1900. The aftermath of these 
harvests of misery is visible though not measurable in 
Russian famines and Roumanian bankruptcy. 

Passing reference has already been made to the employ- 
ment bureau of the United Hebrew Charities. This was 
instituted in 1886 through a special organization of young 
men, which took the form of an auxiliary branch of the 
charities and whose individual members gave their personal 
efforts to the cause. The office was located in the southern 
section of the city and eventually in the Hebrew Education 
Society's Building, Touro Hall, where it is still conducted. 
The number of applicants at this employment bureau, ex- 



PHILA DELPHI A 81 

elusive of a large number of temporary sojourners, has 
averaged over 600 per annum, of whom a considerable pro- 
portion have been placed in positions to maintain them- 
selves. Besides this bureau various organizations of 
women have been formed as auxiliaries to the United 
Charities, such as the Ladies' Auxiliary Committee, the 
Ladies' Volunteer Visiting Committee, and the Personal 
Interest Society, whose activity has aided to a great degree 
in mitigating the suffering of the needy among the Russian 
Jews. 

The gravity of the conditions which the increasing dis- 
tress of the Russian Jews entailed upon those of Western 
Europe and America called forth in 1890 the monumental 
effort of the late Baron Maurice de Hirsch for their 
amelioration. Of the munificent endowment which he 
founded for this purpose on this side of the Atlantic in 
the form of the Baron de Hirsch Trust, a proportion of 
the income is allotted to Philadelphia. Of this allotment, 
$700 per month was dispensed directly to the needy among 
the recent arrivals, for support while learning trades, for 
tools, and for transportation to the interior. This charity 
continues to be dispensed, in varying amounts, through 
the Auxiliary Branch of the United Hebrew Charities. 
Since 1892 a portion of this fund, amounting to $2,400 
per year, has been allotted to educational work through 
the Hebrew Education Society. 

One important factor in the charitable work put forth 
in Philadelphia yet remains to be considered, the central 
agency of ways and means. This agency is now effected 
through an organization chartered under the title of the 
Federation of Jewish Charities, which took up in May, 
1901, the work of financing the various charity undertak- 
ings. Up to that time this troublesome task was performed 
largely by the Hebrew Charity Ball Association, which 
supplemented the sporadic efforts of the individual officers 
and members of the different societies with the proceeds 
of their annual entertainments. The Charity Ball Asso- 
ciation was long a mainstay of Jewish philanthropic work 
in Philadelphia. It was organized, coincidently with the 
United Hebrew Charities in 1869, for the purpose of con- 
tinuing regularly the charity benefit entertainments which 
had previously been given at irregular intervals as occasion 
arose. In time the Hebrew Charity Ball became one of the 
most notable functions of the winter season in Philadel- 



82 . PHILANTHROPY 

phia, attended by large and representative gatherings, 
without distinction of creed. Its proceeds, generally 
amounting to over $20,000, were distributed among the 
various charity societies according to their respective needs. 
These allotments, however, still left the major part of the 
necessary income to be derived from other sources, from 
membership dues, and endowment funds, donation day col- 
lections, fairs, theatre benefits, and, in large measure from 
contributions through the synagogues on the high holy 
days, and finally through specially solicited funds. With 
the growing demands of recent years these diffuse and often 
conflicting agencies of financial support became more and 
more unsatisfactory as well as inadequate. These con- 
ditions led to the adoption of what has come to be Imown 
as the *' Liverpool Plan " of raising charity funds, the 
term being derived from the fact that the method was 
first applied in Liverpool. It was subsequently adopted 
by the Jewish communities of Cincinnati and Chicago and 
latterly, as indicated, in Philadelphia, as well as in other 
cities. 

Under this system every member of the community who 
contributes annually to the Federation a sum at least 
equal to the total of a members' dues in all the constituent 
societies has the right of membership in each of them, and 
if the annual contribution be less than that sum, then to a 
corresponding extent in such of the several organizations 
as may be preferred by the contributor. On the other 
hand the organizations themselves are pledged to refrain 
from all manner of entertainments and assemblies for 
pleasure in the name of charity, or to solicit funds from 
the public otherwise than through the Federation, though 
of course, voluntary contributions from friends and 
patrons are not excluded. 

The results of this measure during the first years of its 
operation in Philadelphia have been very gratifying. 
Where in the preceding year the income of the constituent 
societies outside of that from endowment funds was not 
over $95,000 the subscription to the Federation in its first 
year realized U21,864.07, the second year $127,398.18, and 
the third year, ending April 30, 1904, 121,650.80. The 
Federation has sought, and to an encouraging extent has 
already attained, the great object of unifying the forces 
of the community in the direction of charity work. The 
system gives promise not only of rendering the work itself 



PHILADELPHIA 83 

more efficient but also of bringing a larger number of 
individuals to join in it, and of imbuing the latter with 
a due measure of public spirit. 

Passing to the consideration of the philanthropic works 
which the Russian Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia have 
organized among themselves, we find much that illustrates, 
at the same time that it reveals, the intense vitality of 
the Jewish spirit. It must be remembered that we are 
dealing with a community of refugees, rather than emi- 
grants. The majority of these people did not leave their 
native lands of their own free will and desire but were 
forced to go, often not only without preparation for their 
journey but frequently after being robbed of most of 
their belongings through violence at home and of mucli 
of the poor remainder through chicanery on the way. The 
earliest Russian Jewish immigrants, those of the years 
1882-85, were almost all of them victims of violence in one 
form or another. So, too, were the thousands of their 
countrymen who were driven out of Russia during the 
renewed outbreaks of barbarism that centred at Moscow in 
1890. Scarcely even those who followed their forerunners 
with passage prepaid by relatives on this side could rea- 
sonably be regarded as normal immigrants. They were, 
as the majority of them still are, members of families that 
had been broken up in the course of the persecutions; 
wives and children joining some father who had preceded 
them; sometimes parents with younger children called to 
join older ones already settled here and frequentlj^ other 
relatives and friends of earlier and more fortunate seekers 
after freedom and fortune in America. 

Like the first association of their Sephardic and German 
predecessors, the first '* Russian " Jewish society was a 
Chevra Bikur Cholim, or Brotherhood for Visiting the 
Sick. The small community of Polish Jews v/ho settled 
about 1870 in the northeastern section of the city, in the 
Richmond district, organized a number of chevras that 
gradually merged into a congregation which included the 
usual mutual aid and eleemosynary features. Another of 
these earlier associations for mutual aid and charity is the 
Chevra Chesed Shel Emeth. 

Following the example of their German predecessors, the 
Polish immigrants soon organized national societies for 
mutual benefit and aid, some of which were established 
as early as 1860. During the seventies several lodges of 



84 . PHILANTHROPY 

this character were established in Philadelphia and con- 
tinued their activity to the present day. In the course of 
time, as the immigrants from one or another of the East 
European lands grew in numbers, new societies were 
started, composed of individuals drawn together by closer 
ties of origin. Among the earliest an association com- 
posed of Galicians, formed in 1876 the Krakauer Con- 
gregation, named after the capital of Galicia, and which 
in 1879 was merged with a chevra of the same name. 
Dating also from the decade of the seventies is the Hun- 
garian congregation of the southern part of the city, and 
the Austro-Hungarian Association in the northern section. 
Both these institutions, in addition to other purposes, have 
the usual functions of the mutual aid and charity organi- 
zations. There are various other societies of this nature, 
most of them in the southern section of the city, and all 
of them active in their mission of charity and good will. 
In general, the East European Jews of the earlier and 
voluntary immigration prior to 1882 were of a class of 
sturdy and self-reliant people, who were mostly quite 
capable of taking care of themselves and of those depend- 
ent on or connected v/ith them. They con:iprised but few 
individuals needing charitable aid and these they provided 
for among themselves. 

It was different with the refugees who escaped hither 
after 1882. These came not only in larger numbers but 
also in greater need, and inevitably strained the resources 
of their earlier settled countrymen as well as those of their 
co-religionists of other origin. The several years following 
the beginning of this movement comprised a period of 
marked disorganization among the newcomers. As soon, 
however, as the first years of stress and struggle were 
past, reorganization began to become apparent and in the 
course of the decade one after another of various mutual 
aid societies were formed, so that in 1892 they had organ- 
zied 28 mutual aid societies besides 5 lodges and 5 syna- 
gogues. 

A marked development of communal activity in the Rus- 
sian Jewish community dates from about 1890. In that 
year the immigrant shelter, carried on by the Association 
for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants, was taken over 
by the Hachnosas Orchim, or Wayfarer's Lodge. This so- 
ciety, incorporated in 1891, opened a house for the tempo- 
rary shelter and maintenance of immigrants waiting to find 



FUILADELPHIA 85 

employment or relatives or friends of whom they had lost 
trace, and has developed considerable activity in that 
respect. The society now owns and occupies two adjoin- 
ing houses at 218 and 220 Lombard Street, at times accom- 
modating over 100 inmates. It has about 500 members 
and 1,000 contributors paying a total of about $2,500 
annually, besides donations of clothing, food, and other 
supplies. In 1898 this society extended its sphere to in- 
clude the maintenance of a Moshav Z'kenim or Home for 
the Aged, where a number of superannuated men and 
women are permanently sheltered. This feature of the 
institution is being specially fostered, and will doubtless 
form the main branch of the society's activity when, as is 
to be hoped, the immigrant shelter will no longer be a 
necessity. 

In 1891 the Maimonides Clinic for the treatment of 
indigent immigrants by Russian Jewish physicians was 
estalDlished and was succeeded in 1896 by the Franklin 
Free Dispensary. In 1889 a society of a similar nature was 
organized under the name of the Beth Israel Hospital 
and the following year the dispensary and hospital so- 
cieties were merged. A fully equipped dispensary was 
established at 236 Pine Street. At about the same time 
the Mount Sinai Hospital Association was organized and 
in a short time absorbed the dispensary society. It also 
established an out-patient department. The hospital 
erected at Fifth and Wilder Streets was opened in the 
spring of 1905. 

In 1892 the Independent Chevra Kadisho vv^as estab- 
lished to afford free burial in cases where the family of 
the deceased is too poor to bear the expense. Its member- 
ship is about 3,000, who pay ten cents per month. The 
society has purchased properties at 408-10-12 Christian 
Street, on the site of which there are erected a synagogue, 
school building, and hall in addition to the rooms used 
for the society's own purposes. There are three smaller 
free burial societies with a similar object. 

A loan society, the Women 's Society, Gemilas Chaso- 
dim, was organized in 1896. It makes loans without 
interest to deserving persons in amounts from $5 to $25, 
repayable in installments. Pledges of gold or silver are 
required as security. The capital of the society is $2,378.87 
and the amount loaned during the past year was $3,050. 
There is a smaller organization with a similar purpose. 



86 PHILANTHROPY 

Among 'relief societies should be mentioned the Malbish 
Arumim (Clothing the Naked), which has been active 
since 1894, with the object of helping the needy children 
of the Talmud Torah schools with necessary clothing. It 
has about 200 members. A very worthy charitable effort 
is represented by the United Relief Association which 
includes about 200 members and affords aid in cases re- 
quiring immediate attention, furnishes matzos (unleavened 
bread) to the poor, and wine and eggs to the sick. The 
Roumanian Relief Association, established in 1900, has 
developed into the Roumanian Educational Society, which 
carries on a night school at 422 N. Fourth Street. One 
of the latest and most active of the charitable societies is 
the Ladies' Hebrew Emergency Society, organized in 1904, 
which has a membership of 300 and an income of $1,600. 

Among the important charities established by Russian 
Jews is the Home for Hebrew Orphans, which occupies the 
large building at the southwest corner of Tenth and Bain- 
bridge Streets. It has a membership of about 3,000, who 
contribute from 10 cents per month to $5.00 per annum. 
The annual income last year to August 31, 1904, was 
$12,315.35. The home gives shelter and training to 61 
children. 

From what has been here noted, it will be apparent that 
the process of generating a stable and progressive com- 
munity out of the disorganized and harried victims of 
Slavic ignorance and brutality is well under way in Phila- 
delphia. Much yet remains to be done, not only among 
themselves, but by other elements of the community, to 
further their progress toward stability and order, but the 
advances already attained by the Russian Jewish com- 
munity afford an ample reassurance for the future. 



(C) CHICAGO 

During the Russian Jewish immigration of 1881-82, 
about two thousand persons found refuge in the city of 
Chicago. A special committee, known as the Russian 
Refugee Aid Committee, had full charge of the immigrants 
and of the many problems incident to their care. The 
\ committee, which was composed of representative citizens, 
■^ was independent of the Hebrew Relief Association. It 
succeeded in handling the difficulties of providing for the 
immigrants in a satisfactory manner. About $14,000 was 
contributed as a special fund to defray the expense in- 
curred. 

Families were separated in groups of ten, each group 
being installed in a temporary home, with one family at 
the head. The privileges of such a home were ordinarily 
granted for three weeks. At the end of that time a family 
was expected to be in a position to take quarters on its 
own responsibility. Most of the people settled in a district 
now knov/n as the Ghetto, which even at that early time 
contained a large Jewish population. 

Every possible effort was made by the committee to 
procure employment for the heads of families; and so 
responsive did the general public in the city prove that 
it was only during the last few months of the year that it 
was necessary to send the immigrants into the country 
towns throughout the state. The majority of the men 
were either merchants or peddlers; some were laborers, 
and a very small number mechanics. A member of the 
committee recently stated that most of the immigrants 
succeeded fairly well in their various lines of employment, 
and very few were afterwards forced upon the care of the 
Hebrew Relief Association. 

During the past twenty years or more, the many Jewish 
relief-giving societies had been working independently, 
without due co-operation, or a spirit of mutual helpfulness. 
Each society had its own method of raising annually the 
necessary funds for the year's work. The public was, 

87 



88 PHILANTHROPY 

therefore? continually annoyed by tlie receipt of benefit 
tickets, through the mail, or otherwise, for balls, festivals, 
theatrical performances, concerts, card parties, and other 
forms of entertainment. In order to bring the various 
philanthropic forces of the city, especially the relief 
agencies, into closer and more sympathetic relation and to 
establish a plan of raising money in a manner more accept- 
able to contributors to charity, the Associated Jewish 
Charities of Chicago was organized. 

The new organization received its charter in April, 1900. 
*' The particular business and objects for which it is 
formed are to provide a permanent, efficient and practical 
mode of collecting, administering and distributing the con- 
tributions of the Jews and others of Chicago for private 
charitable purposes; to put into practical and efficient 
operation the best systems for relieving and preventing 
want, and checking pauperism among the Jewish poor of 
said city; to aid the sick, the aged, the poor, the unfor- 
tunate, the widows and orphans." This new association 
proved a financial success in the first year if its existence. 
One of the most desirable results has been the consolida- 
tion of all relief-giving agencies. Relief, such as donations 
of cash, fuel and clothing, is distributed through one cen- 
/ tral body, the Relief Department of the United Hebrew 
! Charities. The women's organizations formerly contribut- 
S ing relief have practically given up work of this nature, 
I and are devoting their energies to specific charities desig- 

(nated by the United Hebrew Charities. 
The institutions and societies receiving support from the 
Associated Jewish Charities are: The United Hebrew 
Charities, for running expense of the Michael Reese Hos- 
pital; Dispensary and Relief Department, with its 
branches ; Home for Aged Jews ; Chicago Home for Jewish 
Orphans ; Jewish Manual Training School ; Maxwell Street 
Settlement ; Bureau of Personal Service ; Home for Jewish 
Friendless and Working Girls; the Woman's Loan Associ- 
ation ; Chicago Lying-in Dispensary and Hospital, for Dis- 
pensary Department. Donations are also sent to the Cleve- 
land Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the National Home for 
Consumptives at Denver. 

Although the institutions supported by the Associated 
Jewish Charities are managed by their special boards of 
directors, they are visited by sub-committees from the cen- 
tral organization and are subject to that organization. 



CHICAGO 89 

In October, 1859, the several societies dispensing charity 
to the Jewish poor of Chicago organized for the purpose 
of working jointly under the name of the United Hebrew 
Eelief Association. The object was to aid distressed co- 
religionists by providing medical assistance and material 
relief. For the twenty years succeeding the formation of 
this union of societies about $120,000 was expended in the 
relief department proper. The subscriptions to this gen- 
eral relief fund increased steadily from year to year, 
$389,500 having been received from 1879 to 1899, inclusive, 
the expenditures keeping pace with the receipts. During 
the greater part of its existence, the Relief Department 
has conducted under its auspices the Michael Reese Hos- 
pital, the West Side Free Dispensary, and a labor bureau. 
The organization is now known as the United Hebrew 
Charities. It is located on the South Side at 223 Twenty- 
sixth Street, somewhat distant from the congested districts. 
The Relief Department confers the ordinary benefits of 
such a department, distributing mainly cash, clothing and 
fuel. Transportation is an item of considerable expense to 
the association. Since the organization of the Associated 
Jewish Charities, the scope of the work of the United 
Hebrew Charities has been materially enlarged. 

The Michael Reese Hospital (established in 1881) con- 
tains fuljy 65 per cent, of Russian Jews among its patients 
annually, according to its superintendent. The number of 
patients, about 2,000, shows how large is the work of this 
institution. An additional equipment is needed and the 
sum of $400,000 has recently been raised for a new hos- 
pital on the old grounds. 

A dispensary for poor Jews was founded and located 
in the Ghetto district during 1893. This dispensary is a 
part of the United Hebrew Charities and is in charge of 
a special board. The spacious quarters and excellent 
equipment of a new building erected a few years ago have 
delighted physician and patient alike and made it possible 
to do much more effective work. 

In February, 1884, an employment bureau was opened 
in connection with the United Hebrew Charities in its office 
on Twenty-sixth Street. The object of this bureau is to make 
families self-supporting by securing employment for the 
wage workers. The majority of the applicants are labor- 
ers, mechanics, and factory workers. The stock yards, 
iron j^ards, tanneries, various other factories, and depart- 



/ 



90 * PHILANTHROPY 

ment stores co-operate with this bureau. Merchants, 
hucksters and peddlers are helped by the loan societies, 
which thus materially supplement the work of the Em- 
ployment Bureau. 

The Chicago Woman's Aid, an organization for lit- 
erary and philanthropic purposes, for three seasons sup- 
ported a work-room for women. The work-room was in 
charge of a paid superintendent, and members of the 
society took an active part in the executive and personal 
service departments. Work was provided for about five 
months each year during the winter. Since the union of 
all relief-giving forces, the work-room became part of a.nd 
supported by the United Hebrew Charities. The members 
of the Chicago Woman's Aid, however, superintended 
the management of the work-room and were active in the 
same manner as heretofore. The rooms were on the West 
Side, within walking distance of Hull House, thus being 
convenient for women who wish to leave their young chil- 
dren at the Hull House Day Nursery. The hours were from 
9 a. m. to 12 m., and from 1 to 4 p. m. The superintend- 
ent was assisted by one permanently employed cutter and 
several who work part of the time. In extreme cases, 
work was supplied at home, but it was preferred to have 
women come to the work room. The garments made were 
baby outfits, including skirts, nightgowns, sheets, etc. 
Other articles made were ladies' underwear, calico wrap- 
pers, children's dresses, boys' blouses, overalls, physicians' 
coats, and linens, such as towels, pillow cases and sheets. 
The beneficiaries of the work room were such women as 
would ordinarily be entitled to the benefits of relief so- 
cieties, especially the United Hebrew Charities. Aban- 
doned wives, widows, and women with invalid husbands 
were employed. They received seventy-five cents a day. 
The daily earnings were formerly fifty cents. When pa}^- 
ment was made at this rate, it was still necessary, in most 
cases, for the United Hebrew Charities to advance the rent 
for the women employed. It was, therefore, considered 
advisable to let the women earn the extra amount, instead 
of having them apply to the Relief Department for it. A 
warm lunch was furnished. 

The employment of these women, requiring them to give 
at least a partial equivalent for what they get, is a most 
creditable way of helping them. It is far superior to the 
old-time method of unconditional giving. It tends to keep 



CHICAGO 91 

them away from the relief agencies, fosters self-respect, 
and is, in many ways, a most wholesome substitute for 
alms. It gives those who ordinarily spend their days in 
dingy, unclean tenements an opportunity to leave the 
crowded quarters for seven hours a day, to breathe purer 
air, to learn the value of cleanliness, and to live in an 
atmosphere of cheerfulness and refinement. 

The Home for Jewish Orphans was founded in March, 
1893. In the fall of the following year a private residence 
was rented in the southern portion of the city, where 
orphans were sheltered until 1899, when the present per- 
manent Home was ready for occupancy. It is located 
opposite the Home for Aged Jews, corner Drexel Avenue 
and Sixty-second Street. It is for the benefit of orphans, 
residents of Cook County, where the death of the parent 
or parents occurs within the boundaries of the county. 
Children of an insane parent are also eligible. The num- 
ber of inmates is 172, of whom 90 per cent, are of Russian 
or Polish Jewish origin. 

The Home for Aged Jews was opened for occupancy 
in 1893. Of the 71 inmates in the Home, 12 are Eussian 
and Polish Jewish. Ordinarily, the aged Russian and 
Polish Jews cannot be prevailed upon to enter this Home. 
It is impossible to convince them that all the laws pertain- 
ing to a strictly kosher plan (that is with food served 
according to the Mosaic law) are enforced. For this rea- 
son, the Russian Jews of Chicago have made strenuous 
efforts to establish their own home for the aged, which 
they maintain in a manner to suit the orthodox. 

The Home for Jewish Friendless and Working Girls is 
a recent addition. There are 120 occupants of its building. 

Early in the winter of 1900, a number of Russian Jews 
on the West Side held local meetings for the purpose of 
enlisting the sympathies of the people in behalf of a home 
for aged orthodox Jews. The idea was conceived by resi- 
dents of the Russian district, where many of the aged live 
in privation and want. Appeals for contributions were 
sent to local societies, to the social and beneficial organiza- 
tions, and to the Russian Jews at large. The project was 
enthusiastically received. Ground valued at $5,600 was 
purchased opposite one of the large parks of the city, far 
removed from the haunts of poverty. For an entire week 
during December, 1900, a bazaar was held for the benefit 
of the Home fund. The Russian Jewish population 



92 • PHILANTHROPY 

worked arduously to make this affair a success, and their 
efforts were rewarded by a $11,000 cash account to be 
added to the fund already in hand. The Home received 
its first inmates May 3, 1903. There are 48 inmates 
(1904). 

The Bureau of Personal Service was organized in Novem- 
ber, 1897. The Bureau is administrative in its policy, its 
object being to bring into closer co-operation the philan- 
thropic forces of the neighborhood, to establish a thorough 
system of investigation and registration, and to promote 
social service. It is non-sectarian, but is located in the 
Russian Jewish settlement and fully ninety-five per cent, 
of the applicants are of the Jewish faith. 

The school census of 1898 showed that in the Seventh, 
Eighth and Nineteenth Wards, immediately adjoining each 
other, there were 15,339 foreign born Russian Jews, and 
13,678 American born, making a total of 29,017. The 
greatest number of these are located in the immediate 
vicinity of the Bureau, which is in the heart of the Ghetto. 

The Bureau gives relief only in emergency cases, refer- 
ring applicants to the proper organizations for permanent 
help. The giving of alms is not advocated, nor is a single 
person recommended for such, unless no substitute can be 
found. Despite the fact that the office is in the midst of 
the greatest poverty in the city, it is not looked upon as 
a relief agency. In all other matters pertaining to the 
family life, or the needs of the poor apart from material 
relief, the good offices of the Bureau are sought. Through- 
out the neighborhood the bureau workers are called ^' the 
mothers of the poor." This expression shows clearly the 
sentiment of the people toward the Bureau and its relation 
to them. As the mother aims to meet the needs of her 
children, caring for their minor grievances and complaints, 
as well as for their grave necessities and troubles, so the 
Bureau endeavors to serve the poor of the vicinity. It 
stands as a friendly service society, stopping only at the 
repeated bestowal of alms. 

The Bureau is in active co-operation with all the relief 
societies of the city; with the courts, inasmuch as they 
are concerned with ordinary problems of justice affecting 
the poor; with the loan organizations; with other societies 
engaged in preventive charity ; and with all medical, hous- 
ing, and correctional institutions or societies. 

Both the superintendent and the assistant superintend- 



CHICAGO 93 

ent are probation officers of the juvenile court. The ques- 
tion of caring for dependent children, not orphans, and for 
delinquent Jewish children had not heretofore been con- 
sidered by philanthropic workers among the Jews of Chi- 
cago. The great need of doing preventive work with and 
for the children, particularly of the West Side, was so 
strongly forced upon the attention of the Bureau, that it 
appeared an unpardonable neglect of duty to overlook it 
any longer. The system of paroling a child not only gives 
to the probation officer access to the home and authority 
over the child, but brings her into close and sympathetic 
relations with the entire family. It has been astonishing 
to the Chicago public to learn that many of the children 
of the Ghetto are on the road to delinquency. The success 
of working in a friendly way with children and parents 
has been most gratifying. 

Fully one half of the entire time of the employees of 
the Bureau is spent in personal service and friendly inter- 
course with the neighborhood people. 

A work-room for women was conducted in connection 
with the Bureau, upon its premises. Payment was in kind 
at the rate of fifty cents per day; cash was given only in 
the most urgent cases and then not regularly. The pay- 
ment in kind was on a very liberal scale. Besides food, 
fuel and second-hand clothing, women had the privilege of 
purchasing household goods, shoes, new wearing apparel, 
or any necessary merchandise to the amount of their earn- 
ings. From two to five days' work per week was allow^ed 
applicants, according to their needs. It is very evident, 
especially during the winter season, that the names of 
many families appear on the records of relief societies 
merely for clothing and fuel. Opportunity for purchasing 
these necessities by a certain amount of labor was afforded 
through the work-room. The reports for the winter 
months show that nearly all the work was paid in coal, 
shoes, and clothes. Second-hand clothing was solicited by 
the Work-room Committee. In this way women could earn 
dresses and wraps of fine, serviceable materials, which they 
could not possibly have gotten otherwise. 

The two work-rooms to which reference has been made 
have gone out of existence, but a description of them has 
nevertheless been thought desirable. 

The Russian Jew of Chicago occupies a unique position 
in his idea of regenerative philanthropy. No actual relief 



94 . PHILANTHROPY 

distributing agency has been established through this popu- 
lation. The need of such an agency has probably not been 
felt, owing to the existence of the United Hebrew Charities. 
Nevertheless, the Russian Jew loves to give; to give freely 
in his own peculiar way, and never seems quite so happy 
as when contributing his mite towards a charitable cause. 
The demands upon him often become burdensome, for it 
is the poor man, he who earns just enough to meet his own 
meagre demands, who takes pleasure in giving to others. 
His idea of method, or a discriminate bestowing of alms, 
is indeed vague. In fact, he thinks very little about it. 
If his neighbor is in distress, he considers himself respon- 
sible, in a measure, for the welfare of that neighbor. If 
necessary, all his friends and acquaintances are called upon 
to share the responsibility. As he has established no relief 
agency to which he may apply for aid, he works on the 
theory that he is his brother's keeper. What is con- 
tributed annually, in a quiet way, by private donations, for 
special cases of distress, to individuals or to families, can- 
not well be estimated, but the amount would without doubt 
be surprising. 

The liberal attitude that the Ghetto resident assumes 
toward his neighbor in distress, the sacrifices he makes, the 
inconveniences he suffers, the privations he endures, — his 
generous bestowal of time and self — are worthy of emula- 
tion ; the charity of the poor for the poor puts our own to 
shame. The poor Russian Jew teaches us the highest type 
of charity. There is always room in the smallest tenement 
— though there be but two beds with seven occupants — 
for the neighboring family that is temporarily homeless; 
there is always a crust of bread, dry though it be, for the 
hungry one who needs it. A little coal can be cheerfully 
spared — though there be but a bucketful — if the children 
nearby are suffering from the cold. How gladly the proud 
possessor of a bonnet ties the precious object upon the 
head of her less fortunate sister when the latter finds it 
necessary to leave the neighborhood for some special pur- 
pose. Not the bonnet alone, but very often dress and 
wrap are loaned with equal readiness. How many a 
woman, the mother of a large family of little ones, goes 
into another home where sickness has entered, and nurses 
the suffering one back to health. How earnestly she goes 
about the work, preparing the necessary articles of diet, 
ministering to the needs of the little ones, doing in that 



CHICAGO 95 

strange home what she does in her own, even to the wield- 
ing of the scrub brush for the Sabbath cleaning! It is 
this beautiful spirit of sharing himself and what belongs 
to him that constitutes the greatest charm of the Russian 
Jew. 

Among the local Russian Jewish organizations, there are 
a few of minor importance, purely charitable in purpose, 
each having a distinct object, so that none interferes with 
or duplicates the work of the other. The most important 
local society working in the Ghetto and deriving the 
greater part of its support from the residents of the dis- 
trict is the Society for the Free Burial of the Dead. About 
$5,000 is raised annually, most of the money being sub- 
scribed in weekly contributions of five, ten, or fifteen cents. 
Two collectors are employed for gathering these small 
amounts from hundreds of patrons. The society owns its 
own burial ground and a hearse, and employs an under- 
taker at a salary of $50 a month. 

The Chicago Young Men's Hebrew Charity Association, 
composed of young men, Russians or of Russian parentage, 
does more or less relief work in the winter months, expend- 
ing about $500 during the season. The Bread for the 
Hungry Society distributes bread and meat once a week 
to deserving poor. The Woman's Society, conducted in 
connection with the Montefiore Free School, furnishes 
clothing for poor boys of the school. A Sheltering Home, 
a small institution, is for the benefit of strangers. Tran- 
sients and newcomers are given temporary lodging free 
of charge. 

Most of the subscriptions to these various local charities 
are raised in small amounts, five or ten cents weekly being 
the usual contribution from each subscriber. In fact, this 
is the method in vogue throughout the district for the col- 
lection of monies for charitable purposes. 

As has been indicated, the charities of the Russian Jews 
do not show evidence of method or union of forces. In 
fact, relief work, and all branches of philanthropy usually 
classed under this head, are considered of secondary im- 
portance to the provision of some wholesome substitute for 
alms. Within the Ghetto proper, including an area of 
about a dozen square blocks, twelve societies, each inde- 
pendent, are engaged in loaning money to the poorest 
classes. ^ All but one, the Woman's Loan, are managed in 
connection with congregations. Loans, however, are not 



96 . PHILANTHROPY 

restricted' to members of congregations. Any poor Jew, 
regardless of belief or nationality, may become eligible to 
its good offices, by complying with the conditions of the 
societj'. This plan of offering a substitute for alms to the 
self-respecting poor is one which, in its essentials, did not 
originate in this country. It is a custom that the Russian 
Jews brought with them from their native homes. 

In all our large cities and even in many of the smaller 
ones we find hospitals for the sick, institutions for the 
afflicted and dependent, societies and relief agencies for the 
benefit of periodically recurrent or emergency cases of dis- 
tress. Yet we do not make adequate provision or offer 
proper relief to the respectable poor, temporarily in want, 
or handicapped through lack of employment, nor do we 
reach those who might be able to help themselves by enter- 
ing into some legitimate occupation on their own responsi- 
bility and thus be spared the humiliation of receiving alms. 
The particular phase of philanthropy which furnishes a 
wholesome substitute for alms in the case of the independ- 
ent, self-respecting poor, seems to have been strangely over- 
looked by the Jewish people engaged in caring for the 
needs of their Russian brethren. 

We find many among our poor Russian and Polish Jews, 
though utterly unskilled in the trades, or incompetent, 
through lack of proper physical development, to serve as 
laborers, who are still able to deal in certain wares, or con- 
duct small business concerns, on their own account. The 
amount required to give them a start and an occasional 
lift is considerably less than would be the cost of pension- 
ing them by a relief society. However opposed a man 
may be to accepting gifts unconditionally, — when he be- 
comes through force of circumstances initiated in the 
pangs of hunger, when his family are suffering for want 
of bread, and no employment is open to him, he is naturally 
forced to accept aid either outright or conditionally. The 
" outright " policy is most dangerous, for it opens invit- 
ingly the doors to pauperism. The man who v/ith reluc- 
tance and aversion tastes the first bitterness of alms gradu- 
ally, with ambition and manhood stunted, looks upon 
charity as a necessity, and finally as a natural right. 

The Russian Jew, the Jew of the Ghetto, has taught us 
the lesson of preventing such demoralization, by offering 
to the poor not alms but a wise substitute. Give the honest 
poor but half a chance and they will surprise the skeptical. 



CHICAGO 97 

Loan a small amount to a man struggling for existence, 
let him invest it in a legitimate occupation, let him by 
thrift manage to keep body and soul together; let him at 
the same time repay the loan in small installments, without 
flinching, and without shirking his responsibility, and 
what greater proof do we require that undaunted courage, 
ambition, honor, and manliness are virtues of the poor? 
Not to annihilate but rather to preserve these sterling qual- 
ities is the mission of the loan organizations. Not only 
are these societies educational, not only do they stand for 
preventive relief, fostering self respect, but hundreds are 
annually spared the necessity of becoming the victims of 
chattel mortgage companies, pawn brokers and money 
lenders. "What the contact of the poor with the latter 
agencies means needs no explanation; their unscrupulous 
methods, and the hardships endured through them are 
patent facts. 

The Russian Jews are a thrifty people, thoroughly ap- 
preciating the benefits accruing to them as beneficiaries of 
loan societies. The borrower soon realizes that the loan 
organization is to him no more nor less than a savings 
bank, where the original amount is loaned to him with the 
privilege of borrowing it again when it has been repaid. 
Thus, each time he pays his small weekly installment, he 
is saving so much out of his earnings for his particular 
use at some future day. It is this advantage that accounts 
for the prompt returns on money loaned and the fact 
that fully 95 per cent, of all money so loaned is promptly 
repaid. 

In the Chicago Ghetto, along the Jefferson Street mar- 
kets, as well as throughout the entire district, there are 
comparatively few of the peddlers, vendors, and keepers 
of small stands and shops, who have not been given a start 
in life or helped over rugged places by loans from local 
organizations. Many confess that it is this opportunity 
of periodically borrowing money that has saved them from 
absolute need. It is marvelous that the poorest of the 
poor, physically weakened from suffering and privation, 
herded together like animals, seemingly without the neces- 
sities of life, with homes barren of the most ordinary com- 
forts, can have the courage to borrow money and return it 
as they do dollar for dollar. It is gratifying to see many 
slowly, very slowly, creeping up from urgent distress to 



98 . PHILANTHBOPY 

comparative comfort without the loss of self respect and 
with the ennobling conviction that they are meeting their 
obligations honestly. 

The business method in vogue in all the loan societies is 
more or less uniform. Loans are made in purely a business 
way. Each borrower gives his note, indorsed by a reliable 
guarantor. He borrows the money with the knowledge 
that he must repay it. All loans are returned in weekly 
payments. The work in connection with the societies is 
voluntary, no paid officers being employed. The reliability 
of guarantors is always inquired into, and most of the 
societies investigate the needs of the borrowers. This is 
necessary in order to prevent fraud and the borrowing of 
money as a subterfuge for obtaining alms, or for purposes 
not consistent with the objects of the organizations. 

The capital of these societies is altogether about $15,000. 
The entire amount is reloaned about three times annuallj^, 
the sum of about $45,000 being actually placed at the dis- 
posal of borrowers during a year's time. In most societies 
loans are returnable in ten installments. The Woman's 
Loan Association allows twenty weeks. About fifteen 
weeks is the average time for repayment in full. It can 
therefore be readily seen that the original capital of 
$15,000 is loaned at least three times during a year. The 
loans are usually for amounts of $10, $15, or $20, and up 
to $100 or more. Probably not less than one thousand 
persons avail themselves of the offices of these societies. 

The financial standing of the guarantor is not so grave a 
consideration as might be inferred from the fact that his 
signature to a note makes him liable for payment, in case 
the borrower fails to meet his obligation. An honest bor- 
rower is more desirable than the wealthiest guarantor. In 
cases where a man has made his payments promptly, so 
that his integrity and sense of honor have been established, 
a second signature becomes a matter of form. There are 
many instances where both borrower and guarantor are 
equally poor, yet equally honest. Ordinarily, it is not the 
well-to-do that act as guarantors. The shopkeeper with 
an established trade, or the owner of a small tenement, 
regardless of encumbrances, are the ones who stand ready 
to confer a favor upon the needy. The risk is small. The 
poor realize fully that the guarantor is a friend in the 
hour of need and that it is necessary to keep faith with 
him. 



CHICAGO 99 

The Woman's Loan Association, composed of about fifty 
prominent Russian Jewish women, claims to be the only 
organization of its kind managed entirely by women. 
Only women are accepted as active members, and all busi- 
ness is transacted by them. Records of its work are kept 
and a thorough investigation is made of all applicants for 
loans, and of the financial standing of the guarantors. 
The Bureau of Personal Service furnishes the investigators. 
The loan committee meets at its office every Monday even- 
ing from 7:30 to 10:30 for the transaction of business. 
Not a single loan was lost in the first three years that the 
association was at work. 

In the fall of 1893, the first steps were taken in the Chi- 
cago Ghetto to introduce this most creditable form of 
philanthropy. 

While at times alms are absolutely necessary, through 
lack of forethought or failure to make adequate provision, 
a relief organization is often responsible for implanting 
habits that only too frequently become a menace to self 
respect. Many applicants for relief could be educated to 
a higher standard of accepting help. Where the question 
of relief alone is considered, those who have become hard- 
ened to asking aid and those who, on the contrary, are pain- 
fully conscious of being forced to apply for alms, are com- 
pelled to knock alike at the same door and pass through the 
same ordeal. Under such circumstances, even the sensi- 
tively inclined cannot be spared certain humiliating experi- 
ences in their relations with relief societies. 



IV 

ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL 
CONDITION 



(A) NEW YORK 
By Isaac M. Eubinow 

Bureau of Statistics United States Department of Agriculture 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 
By Charles S. Bernheimer 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Abraham Bisno 

Former State Deputy Inspector of Workshops and Factories 
for Illinois 



101 



ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL 
CONDITION 

(A) NEW YORK 

By the some^vhat loose phrase, '' economic condition,'' 
we usually designate the condition of distribution of 
wealth. By '' industrial condition," a term equally indefi- 
nite, the modes of acquisition of wealth are usually meant, 
the trades, the professions, the various kinds of economic 
activities. Though far from being scientifically correct, 
these definitions will be found available for the practical 
purposes of this short study. Our subject, then, is the 
methods and results of production and distribution of 
wealth in a large section of the cosmopolitan population 
of our metropolitan city. 

Economic science knows but one satisfactory method for 
such a study — the statistical method. Only by means of 
measurements can the quantitative relations be determined ; 
and the problem of wealth production, and, still more, of 
wealth distribution is primarily a quantitative problem. 
Yet in the whole mass of American statistical publications 
hardly any data can be found which would throw the 
faintest light upon our problem. From purely scientific 
considerations, it is to be regretted that the factor of re^ 
ligion is omitted from our census statistics however justified 
such omission might have been by reason of policy. We 
are not even aware of the exact size of the Jewish colony 
in New York, and the guess at 600,000 made by Joseph 
Jacobs,^ though based upon sound statistical principles, is 
still but a rough guess. The difHculties increase a hundred 
fold if out of the whole Jewish population the Russian 
Jews are to be differentiated. And if our knowledge is so 
very limited in regard to this one item of population, how 
nmch more difficult must it be to deal with the probh'iii 
which we have attempted to touch upon. 

1 Jeursh World, August 17, 1902. 

102 



NEW YORK 103 

As the first steps toward a scientific solution of this 
problem still have to be made, general observations and 
impressions, always subjective, always more or less biased, 
must take the place of careful and accurate scientific data. 
The widest differences in these impressions must be ex- 
pected. Many a charitable Jew or Christian has seen in 
the great New York Ghetto nothing but a huge collection 
of misery and poverty. On the other hand, a Canadian 
observer^ has come to a different conclusion: ^' The Jews 
are about one eightieth of the population, yet they claim 
115 out of the 4,000 millionaires of the country, about 
two and a half times as many as they are entitled to. 
. . . The business of the successful ones extends from 
banking to pork-packing, from realty to dry goods, from 
distilleries to cotton." 

What is the truth? If we give an earnest thought to 
the economic condition of the New York Jews, the very 
first conclusion to which we must come is that there are 
wide differences in the condition of different groups — ■ 
social contrasts, if you will — a characteristic feature of 
American life in general. It may or it may not be true 
that the Jev/s have a larger percentage of millionaires than 
they are statistically entitled to.- Glancing through the list 
of American millionaires which the World Almanac has 
published, we will come across many a Jewish name; and 
yet, very few names, if any, that have an " ovitch " or 
' ' etsky ' ' at the end. While there are a considerable num- 
ber of Jews among the '^ haute finance " of New York, 
scarcely a Russian Jew has yet succeeded in entering these 
exclusive circles. 

With all that, the Russian Jewish population in New 
York is far from being the uniform mass that it appears 
to a superficial observer. It is true that for more than 
twenty years a uniform stream of poverty-stricken Russian 
Jews has flowed to New York — but we must not forget 
that the process began more than twenty years ago and 

^ Beckles Willson, The New America, p. 172. 

" Personally, I doubt the statement. First, Mr. Beckles Willson has given 
us no indication of his sources. Secondly, he has left a very important point 
entirely out of consideration, — that millionaires are only found amidst the 
jiopulation of cities. If only the 33.1 per cent, of the American people which 
live in the cities are counted then the Jews represent not 1/80, but 3/80 of the 
American people, or 150/4,000, while their millionaires are only 115/4,000. 
It is needless to add, however, that all such statistics, which are based upon 
guesses, are more than worthless; they are absurd. 



104 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

that social differentiation has had time to work upon the 
early comers. Almost every newly arrived Russian Jewish 
laborer cames into contact with a Russian Jewish employer, 
almost every Russian Jewish tenement dweller must pay 
his exorbitant rent to a Russian Jewish landlord. It is 
almost certain that both have originally come from the 
same social stratum — for the rich Russian Jewish immi- 
grant was an exception, so rare as to be almost statistically 
negligible, — both at present represent two aspects of the 
same '' economic condition." It is extremely probable 
that at present the majority of Russian Jewish workers 
work for Russian Jewish employers. 

On the one hand, the ordinary business profits of manu- 
facture and commerce, on the other the " unearned incre- 
ment " in the value of real estate, have facilitated the 
growth of a very large and tolerably prosperous Russian 
Jewish middle class in New York. If there are no 
^' ovitches " and *' etskys " in the list of American mil- 
lionaires, there are numbers of them in evidence on the 
Broadway windows and elsewhere. A large proportion of 
the great New York clothing industry (including the 
manufacturing of white goods) is in Russian Jewish hands, 
as well as a fair proportion of the trading in these goods, 
both wholesale and retail. Many other lines of commerce 
and manufacturing have attracted Russian Jewish hands, 
brains and money; yet the needle industries so called, and 
their accessories, have remained the great field of Russian 
Jewish business activity in New York. 

The years (1898-1903) of unprecedented business activ- 
ity and '' prosperity " for the United States, caused an 
unusually brisk demand for the products of this Jewish in- 
dustry ; and the growth of Russian Jewish fortunes in New 
York has been the immediate result of this demand. 
Though we have no income statistics on which to base our 
suppositions, there can be not the slightest doubt that many 
fortunes, ranging between $25,000 and $200,000, have been 
made within these years. It was but natural that these ex- 
traordinary incomes should have been invested in real 
estate, and the phenomenal growth of the so-called Ghetto, 
which has earned the adjective " great " (used very fre- 
quently without the slightest suggestion of sarcasm), has 
had much to do with the formation of a num.ber of fortunes. 
To one who has had an opportunity to watch the economic 
development of the district south of Houston Street, the 



NEW YORK 105 

formation of a well-to-do class in the mi^st of the Russian 
Jewish colony has been a very interesting phenomenon. 
The general improvement in the character of the stores, 
the sudden appearance of a dozen or more commercial 
banks, the well-furnished cafes of a type utterly unknown 
five or six years ago, the modern apartments ' ' with an ele- 
vator and a ' nigger boy ' on the stoop " all tell eloquently 
of this growth. In the show windows of small street stores, 
specimens of furniture have appeared which would not be 
out of place in many an uptown residence. One might say 
that some of the streets, lined with fine old buildings, 
are retracing the steps in their history. Inhabited by the 
'' best people " many years ago, they have gradually be- 
come the abode of some of the poorest. And now poverty 
is forced to fly into other streets and even other quarters, 
to give space to this rising middle class. Many a Jewish 
family has moved uptown, because it could not afford the 
exorbitant rents demanded by the Ghetto landlords and 
Ghetto conditions. 

Yet the Ghetto, where so many of these Jewish fortunes 
are made, is not the only place where the incomes derived 
are spent. If the new conditions have driven many a poor 
family out of the Ghetto, they have also forced the migra- 
tion of the richer class. The possession of a larger income 
has opened the eyes of many a Russian Jewish family to 
the negative qualities of '' downtown life " which before 
had been considered a necessary part of Russian Jewish ex- 
istence in America. The monopoly of " uptown life," 
which the German Jew was supposed to hold, has gradually 
given way. Hundreds and thousands of families have 
started northward in an effort to be as good as their Ger- 
man cousins. Lexington Avenue, the abode of the German 
Jew, became the ideal of the Russian Jew as well. Grad- 
ually as the Russian Jewish colony on this thoroughfare 
and the tributary streets grew larger, and the exclusive 
character of this neighborhood disappeared, a further mi- 
gration westward was started ; the noble thoroughfare which 
divides our great metropolitan city into the '' elite " and 
the '* plebes " was finally crossed, until to-day more Rus- 
sian is spoken west of Fifth and Sixth Avenues than was 
heard on East Broadway ten years ago. There is no doubt 
that these fairly well-to-do Russian families in New York 
reach scores of thousands. 

It certainly is not ready-made clothing and dry goods 



106 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

alone thaf have brought about this prosperity in a part of 
the Russian Jewish population. The jewelry business, the 
liquor business, to a limited extent, and the drug business, 
to a much greater extent, have all contributed to the same 
end. New York Jews have come to play a very important 
part in the theatrical business, but outside of Yiddish thea- 
tres and music halls, within the limits of the Ghetto, the 
Russian Jews have hardly entered this field. 

It is a characteristic phenomenon of Russian Jewish life 
in New York that professions have formed as important a 
basis of prosperity as business, and perhaps even a larger 
one. Some snug little fortunes and an enormous number 
of comfortable incomes (a term of considerable latitude, it 
is to be admitted) have been and are now derived from 
what we define as professional work, and though we have no 
statistics, we can safely make the statement that no other 
element of New York population has so large a percentage 
of professional people as the Jews. The German Jews 
would probably show a higher percentage than the Russian 
Jews, for the former lack the enormous working class. If, 
however, we were to exclude the workingmen and consider 
the middle class only, the German and Russian Jews would 
have to change their places, as the educated and well-to-do 
German Jew takes much more readily to business. 

We cannot stop to consider at length the why and where- 
fore of this phenomenon; an interesting problem it un- 
doubtedly is. The love and respect of the Russian Jew for 
education — unique in view of his economic condition in 
the old country — is one of its positive causes. A certain 
contempt for manual labor, noticed among a considerable 
number of Russian Jew^s — a sad but inevitable result of 
an enforced commercial life — is a cause much less praise- 
worthy. It is needless to point out how quickly this con- 
tempt vanishes under new surroundings, for, after all, the 
vast majority of the Russian Jewish immigrants become 
and remain manual workers. Be this as it may, it is a well 
known fact that the Russian Jewish element is largely 
represented in the professions of medicine, law, dentistry, 
engineering. 

Medicine has remained one of the favorite professions. 
The laxity of entrance requirements, the awe of a doctor's 
title the Russian Jew brings from the old country, and the 
easy success of the older members of the profession have 
all contributed toward the popularity of this vocation. 



NEW YORK 107 

Probably from four hundred to six hundred of the 
seven thousand physicians in greater New York are Rus- 
sian Jews. Though of late symptoms of over-supply in the 
market have been noticed, the influx into the profession 
does not show any signs of abatement. The economic 
status of the majority is fair; many older members are 
well-to-do. In the real estate business of the East Side the 
medical man plays a part by no means unimportant. The 
dentists, less numerous, are much more prosperous. In the 
legal profession, on the contrary, the Russians cannot boast 
of any great success, either financial or otherwise. Phar- 
macy, on the border line between profession and business, 
has also attracted a large number of Russian youths, but 
the returns are far less satisfactory than those of the other 
occupations. 

The teaching profession has probably provided a 
livelihood for more Jewish families than the others which 
we have enumerated. For obvious reasons, only the second 
generation, i.e., those born on the American soil, or those 
who had emigrated at a very early age, are fit for the pro- 
fession; but it will certainly be a revelation to many an 
American to learn how many Russian Jewish young men 
and girls are doing this work of '' Americanization," not 
only of Jewish, but of Irish, German, and Italian children. 
There is no doubt that the Jews have supplied a greater 
proportion of public school teachers than either the Ger- 
mans or the Italians. The profession has never been a road 
to fortune ; yet with the latest salary schedule, a very com- 
fortable living has been provided for several thousand fam- 
ilies. 

The important position which the Russian Jew occupies 
in the professions of New York City is more significant 
because he entered them but a short time since. Ten years 
ago, a Russian Jewish journalist^ found only a few dozen 
representatives of his race in medicine and law, a few in- 
dividuals in dentistry, and hardly any in the teaching pro- 
fession, or in municipal service. These dozens have grown 
into hundreds, and even thousands, within the following 
decade. With a remarkable display of energy and enter- 
prise, the Russian Jew was ready to grasp the opportunity 
whenever and wherever it presented itself. No wonder, 
then, that the professions soon began to feel the effects of 

^ Dr. Price. The Russian Jew in America (in Russian). St. Petersburg, 
1891. 



108 ECONOMIC AND INDVSTBIAL CONDITION 

this influx. The extraordinary profits of the pioneer have 
vanished. At the same time the necessary increase in the 
stringency of the laws regulating professional work has 
very wisely cnt off the possibility of entering a profession 
to many who were unprepared for it. 

While the economic significance of the facts passed under 
review cannot be denied, it is evident that business and 
professional classes make up only a small percentage of the 
Russian JcAvish population of New York City — much 
smaller, indeed, than of the German Jews. 

The vast majority of the Russian Jews are on a much 
lower economic level. They belong to the *' masses," as 
against the " classes." The cause will be easily under- 
stood if we remember that the average Russian Jewish im- 
migrant brings the magnificent capital of $8 into this coun- 
try, while the average non-Jewish immigrant is the happy 
possessor of double that fortune. 

Within these ' ' masses ' ' industrial labor of various kinds 
is the main source of livelihood. The New York Russian 
Jew is a wage Avorker, notwithstanding the numerous ex- 
ceptions to the rule. The examples of wage-workers of 
yesterday changing into employers of labor almost over 
night are many. Lately these examples have been rapidly 
multiplying with the remarkable changes going on within 
the clothing industry — a process of decentralization, due 
to the legislative difficulties put in the way of the domestic 
system, which was the backbone of the clothing industry 
some years ago. In 1900, New York state had more than 
4,000 establishments for manufacture of clothings, most of 
them in New York City, and a very large proportion in 
Russian Jewish hands. Yet the number of these proprie- 
tors is insignificant in comparison with more than 100,000 
workers in this same industry in the same state. The 
vast majority of the newcomers also join this industrial 
army, in this as well as other branches of manufacturing. 
The question of the economic condition of the Russian Jew 
in New York is therefore pre-eminently the question of 
wages, hours, and conditions of labor in general. 

The predominance of industrial laborers in a social 
group that long had the reputation of being fit for com- 
mercial life only is striking. The Russian- Jews in their 
own country are largely engaged in commercial occupations 
into which they were forced many decades ago. It was- 
but natural that the first immigrants of the eighties contin- 



NEW YORK 109 

ued here in the same channels. Hence the extreme popu- 
larity of the peddler's basket, which has helped to sup- 
port many a hungry family and has laid the foundation 
for snug little fortunes to be invested in larger ventures. 
Within the last twenty years the change has been remark- 
able — in New York and a few other large cities, more 
than in the rest of the country whither a few Russian Jews 
have wandered. Ordinary door-to-door peddling has de- 
generated into begging in its lower forms ; in its ' ' higher ' ' 
form of custom-peddling it approaches a mild form of 
swindling, and whatever the lucrative properties of the 
occupation, the social standing of its members is far lower 
than that of common every-day wage workers. 

Whatever we may think of the practical advantages or 
disadvantages of the concentration of the clothing indus- 
try in Jewish hands, its scientific value cannot be denied. 
Here we have an industry so thoroughly Jewish (in New 
York) and with the Russian Jew predominating so strong- 
ly that the statistical data of the clothing industry cannot 
but reflect the conditions of the Russian Jewish worker in 
New York. 

The objection may certainly be raised that the data con- 
cerning this industry tell us only of that part of the Rus- 
sian Jewish colony which is employed in tailoring, and this 
part, no matter how large, is still considerably smaller than 
the whole. This objection must be sustained if we desire 
scientific accuracy. But, on the other hand, a tendency 
toward the leveling of wages in various related industries 
cannot be denied; the entrance into the tailoring industry 
is not obstructed by difficulties of a technical or legal na- 
ture. It must be admitted, therefore, that there is no eco- 
nomic ground for considering the condition of the Russian 
Jewish tailor exceptionally high as compared with the 
worker of the same nationality in other industrial branches. 
The average earnings of the tailor will be nearer the bot- 
tom than the top. 

According to the Twelfth Census^ there have been em- 
ployed in the various branches of the clothing industry of 
the United States, over half a million wage earners, more 
than 30,000 salaried men, in addition to probably more 
than 50,000 proprietors (though the number is not given 
of 48,497 establishments). The value of the production 

^Vol. IX, pp. 259-302. 



110 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

amounted' to $804,509,370. If we consider the factory 
production of clothing exclusively, we shall have 205,631 
wage earners and products having a value of $431,881,748. 
Out of this. New York state shows an enormous share, more 
than one-half of the total American industry — 90,519 
wage workers and $233,721,653 of products. These figures 
tell an eloquent story of the magnitude of the commercial 
interests represented by the Jew, and primarily the Rus- 
sian Jew. 

The statistical data of the clothing industry in the city 
of New York, especially interests us at this moment. Com- 
bining the data for all the clothing industry proper, men's 
as well as women's, factory work as well as custom work 
and repairing, we find in New York City^ 8,266 establish- 
ments with a capital of $78,387,849; 90,950 workingmen; 
and a value of products of $239,879,414. So much for the 
extent of the clothing industry. If we consider that twenty 
years ago the capital invested in this industry throughout 
the country was only $88,068,969, or hardly more than the 
present share of New York City alone, the results of the 
industrial activity of the New York Jews will be appreci- 
ated. 

The following tables will, it is hoped, be found both in- 
teresting and instructive: 

Average Weekly Wages (1900) 

CHIL- 
MEN WOMEN DREN 

American manufactures in general. .$ 9.82 $5.46 $3.04 

Men's clothing, factory product 11.36 5.08 2.75 

Women's clothing, factory product.. 12.10 5.86 3.14 

We should not trust wage statistics implicitly. Yet if 
these data, calculated from official tables, mean anything, 
they indicate that the economic position of the Jewish 
worker in the clothing trade, while not at the top, is surely 
not at the bottom of the American working class, as his 
wages are considerably above the average. Let us continue 
our investigation a little further, and compare the clothing 
trade in New York with manufactures in general in the 
same city. 

1 Tzvelfth Census, Vol. VIII, p. 622. 



NEW YOBK 111 

Taking the average of 264 specified industries in New 
York/ we obtain the following data : 

Average Wages, Workers in New York 

CHIL- 
MEN WOMEN DREN 

Manufactures $12.38 $6.42 $3.36 

Men's clothing, factory product 12.26 6.34 2.94 

Womens' clothing, factory product. . 12.62 6.86 3.72 

Again, this table corroborates the conclusions we reached 
from the previous figures. The close correspondence of 
these figures is no mere coincidence. It conclusively shows 
that the Jewish trades are not below the average even in 
New York, where wages are higher, because living is dearer 
and labor better organized than in many other industrial 
communities. 

The foregoing figures are based upon the Federal Cen- 
sus. A study of another authority, the reports of the New 
York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, seems to lead to dif- 
ferent conclusions. In the tables of average wages, which 
this bureau publishes yearly, the wages in the clothing and 
tobacco industries appear among the lowest. Mention of 
this fact is made because the statistics of the Department 
of Labor are very popular with the New York press. In- 
vestigation reveals the fact that only the wages of union 
trades are here enumerated, i.e., of the best paying, we 
might say '' aristocratic " branches of labor. Of course, 
the average Jewish worlanan has not yet reached the stand- 
ard of the highly paid American union mechanic. But 
in the vast majority of cases his condition is much above 
that of the ignorant laborer. 

Ordinary observation will corroborate the conclusions 
drawn from statistical tables. If we disregard for the 
present the very new arrival, who visually falls into the 
clutches of the most unscrupulous employer, whether of 
Jewish faith or any other faith, the condition of the aver- 
age Jev/ish tailor is not so hopelessly bad as many pessi- 
mists would make us believe. It is undoubtedly better 
than the condition of those of his brethren whom he leaves 
behind in the old country. If it were not so we should 
have no constantly growing stream of immigration. This 

1 Tzvelfth Census, Vol. VIII, pp. 625-28. 



112 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

is a matter of course. But what is more noteworthy is 
that his general standard of life is much above that of 
many other nationalities of the population of New York 
City. He may not have the taste, the style, the general 
*' savoir vivre " so characteristic of the American work- 
ingman. Not only does he earn less, but his wife has not 
been instilled with the same training of cleanliness and 
neatness which characterizes the American women. On 
the side of expenditure as well as income, the Jewish tailor 
has much to learn from the American; aesthetically, his 
home is much below the average American home. On the 
other hand, he is free in the majority of cases from those 
faults of wastefulness and dissipation which characterize 
many Irish, Italian, and sometimes even German working- 
men; and his home has many claims to comfort and well- 
being. The ordinary, busy Jewish tailor keeps a fairly 
good table, has a parlor with a parlor set of furniture, and 
is able to indulge in an occasional visit to the Jewish thea- 
tre. 

The following table will show how prevalent the needle 
industries are among the Russian Jews in New York: 

MEN WOMEN TOTAL 

Dressmakers 314 1,948 2,262 

Hat and cap makers 278 298 576 

Milliners 68 668 736 

Seamstresses 1,286 4,021 5,307 

Sewing machine operatives 273 273 

Shirt, collar and cuff makers 1,043 509 1,552 

Tailors 20,323 3,304 23,627 

Total in needle trades 23,312 11,021 34,333 

Total in manufacturing and me- 
chanical pursuits 44,160 14,362 58,522 

Per cent, in needle trades 52.8 76.8 58.6 

Thus, almost 53 per cent, of male Russian Jewish work- 
ers and 77 per cent, female are employed in the needle in- 
dustries. There are also hundreds of '' non- Jewish '^ 
trades, in which, nevertheless, scores of Russian Jewish 
working-men can be found. Such are plumbing, cabinet- 
making, paper-hanging, mirror-framing, printing, engrav- 
ing, and many others. As is shown in the above table, how- 
ever, the majority are still allied to the needle trades, and 



NEW YORK 113 

it remains true that the needle has saved the Russian Jew 
in New York. This tendency to enter other industries will 
be more noticed in the future than in the past. Especial- 
ly is this true of the second generation, the American born 
Russian Jews: they are free from those conditions which 
have forced their parents along narrower lines. 

It is hardly necessary to prove that the average wages in 
these enumerated Jewish trades, with the possible exception 
of the tobacco industry, are not below the wages in the 
clothing trades. As a matter of ordinary observation, 
wages in many of these trades, as well as in some branches 
of the clothing industry, rise above $12, and often reach 
over $20 per week. 

The claim is often made that while the nominal wages 
of the Jewish tailor in the busy season may be compara- 
tively high, his employment is irregular, and his actual 
average weekly income is much smaller than would appear 
at first sight. That there is a great deal of truth in this state- 
ment cannot be denied. The needle trades are season 
trades to a great extent, and, like all other season trades, 
are subject to great irregularity. While the average em- 
ployment of the union workers in all trades in the first 
quarter of 1901 was, according to the New York Bureau 
of Labor Statistics, 67 days, in the tailoring trades it was 
54 days. The difference is not inconsiderable, but is part- 
ly compensated for by the rush of work and almost con- 
stant overtime during the busy season. The overtime work 
is interrupted by long breaks, and is usually paid for at a 
higher rate. The arrangement, however, is one that is by 
no means conducive to the health of the Jewish worker. 
The enforcement of the ten-hour day is about as efficient 
in the case of Jewish union workers as in that of most New 
York workingmen, with the exception of a few very strong 
trades, the building trades for example, which have suc- 
ceeded in reducing it below ten hours, and in keeping it 
there. 

The conclusions to which this necessarily brief statistical 
study leads are almost too self-evident to require any 
lengthy discussion. As far as the present condition of the 
Russian Jew is concerned, we find that in New York, at all 
events, it is not below par. The same differentiation in 
economic classes exists in the Russian Jewish colony as in 
the other elements of the population, it being inevitable in 
modern society. In the small circle of millionaires, our 



\ 



114 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

Kussian brethren may not have their proportionate quota; 
their middle class, and what is more important, their work- 
ing class, is certainly not below, and possibly above, the 
average level economically, especially above the average 
level of other foreign elements, such as the Italian, the 
Irish, and the Austrian. This comparatively satisfactoij 
condition is the more remarkable when all the great diffi- 
culties which the Russian Jew w^as forced to overcome are 
taken into consideration: the poverty of the new arrival, 
his lack of knowledge of any practical trade, his muscular 
weakness (as is pointed out by Dr. Fishberg in this vol- 
ume). These difficulties cannot be denied. But only gross 
ignorance or inhuman cruelty can hold the Russian Jew re- 
sponsible for such conditions. History shows that for 
many centuries the Jews have been forced away from man- 
ual labor into commercial life. Yet at the first opportun- 
ity, the Russian Jew became a hard and patient industrial 
worker, and, let us add, an extremely useful worker. The 
prime object of this work was necessarily the acquisition 
of means of support. But the very success of the Rus- 
sian Jew in attaining this object shows that there was a 
place and demand for his industrial activity. The con- 
centration of the Russian Jewish population in a few in- 
dustrial centres has long been spoken of as an evident evil ; 
yet this concentration has helped the Russian Jew to a 
ready sale of his labor, and has saved hundreds of thou- 
sands from dependence upon charitable institutions. It 
is the much abused needle and sewing machine that have 
solved the problem of how to dispose of swarms of Russian 
Jewish immigrants. It is the needle that has revolution- 
ized a large and important industry in which hundreds of 
millions of dollars w^ere invested. It is the needle that has 
contributed a share toward making this city an important 
manufacturing centre of the country, and last, but not 
least, it is this Jewish Russian needle that has made the 
American nation the best dressed in the world. 

It must be acknowledged that after all is said for or 
against immigration, the fear of the American working 
class that the immigrant, with his lower standard of life, 
may reduce American wages, remains the greatest objec- 
tion, nay, the only objection to immigration which has a 
certain validity. Now, then, it was to be expected that 
the Russian Jew should produce such an effect. What did 
the Russian Jew who immigrated to America in the eighties 



NEW YORK 115 

and early nineties know of unions and demands for a higher 
standard? The reader will believe that I have stated 
strongly the case against the Russian Jewish worker. The 
more remarkable is the progress the Russian Jewish popu- 
lation has made within the very short period of fifteen or 
twenty years, the progress which has made the Russian Jew 
a fighter within the ranks of the American labor move- 
ments and a force for the betterment of the American 
working class. 

The report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1902 
furnishes the following data as to the membership for the 
borough of IManhattan in the unions of the clothing and 
allied trades, that is, those specifically Jewish: Buttonhole 
makers, 150; cloakmakers (this includes Brooklyn), 8,000; 
cloth examiners, 86; cloth spongers, 214; clothing cutters, 
1,500; coat makers, 4,255; jacket makers, 350; kneepants 
makers, 2,206 ; neckwear cutters, 230 ; overall workers, 49 ; 
pants makers, 1,800; pressers, 1,500; tailors, 1,000; vest 
makers, 1,550; wrapper makers, 839; cloth hat and cap 
operators, 1,209 ; shirt cutters, 315 ; shirt-waist makers, 
1,660. This is a total of some 20,000 for the borough of 
Manhattan. These numbers refer almost exclusively to 
Jewish workers; there are, besides, many Jewish working- 
men members of various other unions. And if we con- 
sider that the total membership of unions in the borough 
is about 150,000, the part Jewish Vv^orkers play in the union 
movement will easily be appreciated. It is true, of course, 
that these unions are far inferior to the oldest American 
unions in strength, that often they are ephemeral in exist- 
ence; the very " round " figures of the official statistics 
are an indication thereof. Frequently they organize for 
a particular occasion, as a great strike, only to sink almost 
into nothingness as soon as that particular purpose is ac- 
complished. Their treasuries very seldom, if ever, contain 
large sums. It is not surprising, then, if the opinion is 
often expressed that the unions of Jewish tailors exist on 
paper only. Yet this is far from being the unbiased truth. 
The teachings of a circle of enthusiastic and energetic peo- 
ple all through the eighties have not fallen on barren 
ground. There certainly exists collective bargaining in the 
clothing industry — and that is the most essential feature 
of unionism. It is sufficient to talk to any clothing manu- 
facturer in New York, and listen to his invocations against 



116 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

the unions, to be convinced that these unions are a real 
power. 

We agree that the picture drawn above is very optimis- 
tic. It is because it is not complete. Not the whole of the 
New York clothing industry is in such good condition as 
to its employees, for who has not heard of the New York 
sweatshops ? 

Of the horrors of the sweatshops so much has been writ- 
ten and spoken that scarcely an intelligent New Yorker can 
be found who is not to some degree aware of their evils. 
Private investigators as well as authoritative official bodies 
have made thorough studies of the situation. The peculiar 
conditions of the clothing industry which make home work 
and the exploitation of ignorant immigrants so easy, have 
facilitated the establishment of the system. The very 
'' green " immigrant who knows nothing of the conditions 
of the market is an easy prey to the sharks of his own or 
any other nationality. The subcontracting system, once 
established, was a terrible competitor to the legitimate fac- 
tory. 

To a certain extent, this pernicious system was even ad- 
vantageous to the worker. It supplied him with a source 
of immediate income almost the clay after his arrival; and 
no matter how small the pay, he looked upon his employer 
as his benefactor. As the pay was often too small to sup- 
port the large family even in the poorest style, it became 
necessary for his wife and children to join in work, and 
the " benefactor," with his sweatshops, very often an old 
friend from the old country, provided them all with work. 
It was fortunate that this system extended only to a few 
'^ Jewish " industries and so affected but little the New 
York workingman in productive employments, or the op- 
position against the Jewish workers would have been 
strong, and in a measure justified. The sweatshop is not 
an exclusively Jewish institution ; it has been, and remains, 
very wide-spread. Italians to a large degree share it. 

The sweatshop, with its inevitable trinity of harmful 
consequences, — low wages, long hours, and female and 
child labor — remains the essential economic problem of the 
Russian Jewish population of New York City, as far as any 
economic problem can be national in so cosmopolitan a city 
as New York. The Jewish unions have tried to remedy 
the evil, but the problem has proven too extensive for them. 
It is evidently a problem for general social interference, 



NEW YORK 117 

for legislative enactment. Luckily, the sanitary aspects of 
the system have proven so dangerous that solicitude for 
social safety has made possible a movement which consider- 
ation for the interests of the poor immigrants could never 
accomplish. The numerous laws against sweatshops en- 
acted of late in New York, as well as in Boston and Phila- 
delphia, though far from being decisive in their influence, 
have yet had some beneficial result. The movement must 
grow in force, if the final aim — the transformation of the 
home industry into a factory system — is to be accom- 
plished. Already the first steps in this direction are to be 
noticed. Because of the difficulties put in the way of 
sweatshops, the contract system is giving way in New York 
to small factories. Home work will have to be fought 
against, notwithstanding the constitutional difficulties of 
interfering with the personal liberty of the American sover- 
eign in his castle ; it will have to be fought in spite of the 
resistance of the exploited homeworkers. In a pathetic 
little story, a talented Yiddish writer wittily describes the 
objection and fear of a Jewish tailor of a '' tyrannical 
American law which will interfere with an honest Jew 
working in the evening.^* The remoter results of such 
legislation cannot be appreciated by the lower strata of the 
working mass. The religious aspect of the question, the 
necessity of a Sabbath rest, which often drives the old-fash- 
ioned Jew from a well regulated factory into a dingy 
sweatshop, will also command serious attention. Some 
modification of the strict Sunday laws will probably be 
found necessary. 

The large Russian Jewish population presents, as we have 
seen, the various elements of social stratification and is not 
free from any social problem that confronts the great 
American people. But in the economic field we do not 
see any specifically Jewish question except those men- 
tioned, whatever the condition of affairs may be in the edu- 
cational or in the intellectual fields. And as the problems 
are general, and not specifically Jewish, so the solution 
must be. 

The writer of 'these lines is conscious, however, of a wide- 
spread and very different view. There is a very general 
cry in certain Jewish quarters, even more than in the non- 
Jewish ones, that the rapid increase of the Jewish popula- 
tion in New York has given birth to a specific Jewish prob- 
lem, which is mainly economic, but also moral and intel- 



118 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

lectual. * " The East Side Problem," " The Ghetto 
Problem " are synonymous terms. The concentration (or 
congestion, as they prefer to style it) of the Jews in New 
York as well as the other large cities, is an unmitigated evil 
as well as an economic mistake. Pathetic descriptions of 
the dirt, misery and squalor of the Ghetto are commonly 
associated with this argument. The fact is usually disre- 
garded that there is a great deal more dirt, misery and 
squalor in Italian, Irish and other kindred '' ghettos " of 
Manhattan Island. 

The following few lines are from an authoritative Jew- 
ish source •} 

" The conditions amid which the Jews of the New York 
Ghetto are compelled to exist are slowly but surely under- 
mining both that moral and physical health of which we 
have hitherto been so proud. The unspeakable evils that 
the tenements and the sweatshops as they still persist in- 
evitably produce in the vfay of depressed vitality, sickness, 
consequent poverty, and death, are evils that it behooves 
us to endeavor to kill at the root. . . . Every attempt 
to improve the tenement house, to remove present residents 
of the Ghetto to outlying portions of the city, to small 
towns and rural communities, should receive an earnest 
help and active co-operation. . . . By its geographical 
position, the city of New York has peculiar limitations with 
respect to population which may not be overstepped with- 
out a serious menace to the community." 

This quotation is typical of the arguments which have 
found their practical realization in the agitation for re- 
moval. As the causes of concentration are pre-eminently 
economic, so its economic results are of utmost importance. 
There is a tendency to define these economic results in one 
short and significant word, " poverty," and removal to 
other cities is pointed out as a relief. The following statis- 
tical data may help us to decide how far the claim is true 
that poverty is the result of the Russian Jewish congestion 
in New York, how far the condition of the Jewish worker 
may be improved by his removal to a small town. Wages 
being the source of income of the workingman, his pros- 
perity depends financially upon the level of wages : 

1 Lee K. Frankel, Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the United Hebrew Chari- 
ties of the City of New York (1900), pp. 32-34. 



NEW YORK 119 

Men's Clothing, Factory Product 

AVERAGE WAGES MEN WOMEN CHILDREN 

United States $11.36 $5.08 $2.75 

New York City 12.26 6.34 2.94 

Outside New York City .... 10.70 4.88 2.73 

The last two lines indicate the difference in average wages 
in the tailoring trade in New York and outside New York, 
and tell a quite eloquent story. The same peculiarity is 
observed in the women's clothing industry: 

Women's Clothing, Factory Product 

AVERAGE WAGES MEN WOMEN CHILDREN 

United States $12.10 $5.86 $3.14 

New York City 12.62 6.94 3.72 

Outside New York City 10.62 4.98 2.83 

Again : 

Men's Clothing, Factory Product 

AVERAGE WAGES MEN WOMEN CHILDREN 

New York City $12.26 $6.34 $2.94 

Chicago 11.86 6.12 3.40 

Philadelphia 12.40 6.38 3.67 

Other Localities 9.98 4.62 2.70 

The table does not seem to afford any justification of the 
claim that to remove the Russian Jew from New York to 
the smaller towns is to adjust the labor market. 

The other great branch of the tailoring industry, wom- 
en 's clothing, shows exactly the same condition of affairs : 

Women's Clothing, Factory Product 

AVERAGE WAGES MEN WOMEN CHILDREN 

New York City $12.62 $6.86 $3.72 

Chicago 13.14 5.12 2.80 

Philadelphia 10.80 5.16 3.16 

Elsewhere 10.02 4.90 2.78 

Such are the differences in the wage levels between the 
large and small towns. 

It is interesting to study the comparative women's and 



120 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

children's labor in some of the Jewish trades in New York 
and elsewhere. The following table shows the smallest 
proportion of this labor in New York City : 

Percentage of Women's and Children's Labor Combined 

MEN 'S WOMEN 'S 

CLOTHING CLOTHING 

New York City 33.6 57.2 

Chicago 64.2 87.9 

Philadelphia 35.4 71.1 

Elsewhere 73.4 85.1 

The closest attention of the reader is invited to these 
tables. They tell at a glance why the Russian Jew prefers 
at present to stay in New York. Instead of being an eco- 
nomic mistake, it is the result of economic sagacity, un- 
conscious perhaps. 

The writer will readily acknowdedge that the one-sided- 
ness of the argument leaves it open to serious criticism. 
He is aware that money wages are often misleading and 
may not strictly correspond to actual wages, measured in 
terms of commodities and comforts. Unf ortuna cely a care- 
ful search through American statistical literature has failed 
to disclose information as to retail prices,^ and the working- 
men's budgets, published by the Bureau of Labor do not 
take the difference between large and small towns into 
consideration. 

It cannot be doubted, however, that lower wages go hand 
in hand with lower expenditures, for the limited credit of 
the average workingman does not permit his spending more 
than he earns. But it is undoubtedly true that the gen- 
eral conviction prevails that living is comparatively 
cheaper in small towns than in large cities. Let us subject 
the basis of this conviction to a short analysis. 

Food, clothing, and shelter are the three prime channels 
of expenditure in a workman's family. Food is certainly 
cheaper in a great many rural and semi-rural communities, 
where many articles are produced in the neighborhood. 
With slight exception, however, in rural communities ap- 
plication for industrial energy is not readily found. When 
we turn to middle-sized cities, where the local supply of 
vegetable and animal food stuffs is no longer available, 

^ American price statistics deal with wholesale prices and are therefore of 
little value for the study of expenses of living. 



NEW YORK 121 

this particular advantage vanishes altogether. Wholesale 
prices for food stuffs are determined in the world's market 
and only modified by facilities and expenses of transporta- 
tion. In determining these expenses mere distances are 
much less important than geographical position, terminal 
facilities and other matters, in which large centres like 
New York possess a great advantage over smaller inland 
cities. Fresh meat, fruits and vegetables are more easily 
obtained and cost less in New York than in Washington, 
Syracuse, Oshkosh, or Kalamazoo. That this is especial- 
ly true of clothing, dry goods, and the thousand and one 
products of manufacture, daily used in the home, no one 
will deny, as the large cities, particularly New York, are 
centres for the production of these goods. 

On the other hand, it is equally true that rents are lower 
in the smaller cities, or rather that the working people pay 
less rent in the smaller than in the larger cities. The lat- 
ter form of the statement is preferred because in the 
smaller town the working man pays less for a shelter, and 
may even have more room, but seldom gets the many com- 
forts and improvements that even a tenement home in New 
York provides. Gas, water, washtubs, sometimes a bath- 
tub, or even hot water, — all these are luxuries in the small- 
er towns not to be found in many a workingman's home. 
Though in the final analysis the worker in the small city 
is favored in the matter of rent, the difference will hardly 
overbalance the higher prices for clothing, provisions, and 
many other incidentals of the household. 

The conditions of labor will have to change before the 
Russian Jew will find it advantageous to go further in- 
stead of stopping in New York. The general improvement 
in the conditions of labor in the smaller towns will have 
to come first. Only when labor legislation shall have ac- 
complished for the smaller towns what labor unions have 
partially succeeded in accomplishing in New York will the 
problem assume another aspect.^ 

1 For a fuller discussion of this problem, the reader is referred to the fol- 
lowing articles of the author: "Concentration or Removal — Which?" Ameri- 
can Hehrezv, July 17 and 24, 1903, and " Removal! A New Patent Medicine." 
Ibid. September 25. 1903. In the intermediate numbers of this publication, 
discussions of this point of view may also be found. 



(5) PHILADELPHIA^ 

To analyze the economic and industrial condition of a 
people is intensely interesting, but it is painful to watch 
the tense struggle for existence which is going on among 
the population about to be described. There are, it is true, 
influences at work which make the struggle hopeful, and 
which lighten the burden at times, but the strife and the 
stress are severe. Hardened to suffering, the people push 
on tenaciously, grimly facing the by-stander, often scoffing 
at the feeling of pity which may well up in him. 

It is my purpose to present a picture of the economic 
life of the Eussian Jews of the city of Philadelphia. A 
forced immigration covering a period of twenty years is not 
likely to produce a very settled population, and the picture 
will therefore show features due to the rapid changes which 
are going on. All stages of prosperity and lack of pros- 
perity are to be found among the population. On the one 
side are those who still need the helping hand of the relief 
and the employment agencies, on the other are those who, 
arriving here poverty-stricken, have amassed wealth and 
employ large numbers of persons in their businesses. Be- 
tween are the struggling masses. 

The industries in which the Eussian Jewish population 
are most largely employed may be summed up under the 
head of needle industries. These include the clothing 
trade, and the manufacture of cloaks, waists, wrappers, 
skirts, shirts, overalls, and underwear. In the manufac- 
ture of clothing in this city the majority of the employees 
are Eussian Jews. 

Some idea of their occupations can be obtained from an 
examination of the assessors' list of voters in some of the 
lower wards of the city. Some time ago I counted roughly 
about 2,000 Jewish voters, and of these fully one-third, 
about 700, were marked as tailors or as connected with the 
tailoring trade. Over 300 were entered as merchants and 

^ The writer is indebted to Miss Helen Marot and Miss Caroline L. Pratt 
for some of the data furnished in reference to the clothing trade. 

122 



PHILADELPHIA 123 

dealers. Under the euphemistic title of '' dealer " arc 
doubtless a large number of peddlers. There were over 
100 recorded as clerks and salesmen, 85 as cigar makers, 35 
as butchers, 25 as grocers, and the remainder in a variety 
of occupations. It would serve no purpose to give the de- 
tails, for, aside from the lack of a system of classification 
of occupations, one of the last places to go for an accurate 
statistical record is a Philadelphia assessor's list of voters 
in a downtown ward — or in many an uptown ward — so 
that the figures given are not to be regarded as careful 
statistical estimates, but merely as illustrations of the lead- 
ing occupations. 

An examination of the occupations of the Russian Jew- 
ish pupils of three public night schools down town (Fifth 
and Fitzwater Streets, Third and Catharine Streets, and 
Sixth and Spruce Streets), one season, revealed the fact 
that of about 900 young men and 600 young women, fully 
a third were in the needle industries. It is of interest to 
note, also, that there were about 50 peddlers and keepers of 
stands, over 75 newsboys, and some 120 cash, errand, and 
messenger boys. 

In the absence of special skill for particular trades the 
immigrants have gone into the easily acquired needle indus- 
tries, in which, with their minute subdivision, a particular 
occupation can, in many instances, be learned in a few 
weeks. The immigrant becomes a sweatshop laborer, with 
all that that implies. 

There has been some endeavor to divert the steady stream 
which leads from the immigrant ship to the sweatshop. 
Families are at times sent into country towns to labor, and 
individuals are forwarded into factory towns where they 
can work imder better conditions than are afforded by the 
over-crowded needle industries in the city. The movement 
from this city, though small and slow, is nevertheless en- 
couraging. 

The schools of the Hebrew Education Society are an- 
other example of an endeavor to remove the economic clog, 
and to turn the immigrants into the direction of skilled 
industries. Hundreds of graduates from this school can 
testify to the effort in the direction of industrial education. 
Cigar making and clothing cutting for young men, millin- 
ery and dress making for young women, are taught in this 
school. 

The results are comparatively small, however. The 



12-1 ECONOMIC AND INDUS TBI AL CONDITION 

problem of the congested needle industries is but little af- 
fected by sucli efforts, when the condition of the thousands 
in these trades is considered. 

I have no means of determining with any degree of ac- 
curacy the number of Russian Jews in this city in the vari- 
ous trades. There is enough evidence from different sides 
to show beyond a doubt that the needle workers are by far 
predominant in numbers, and from examination of the 
factory inspectors' reports and personal inquiry of leading 
workers, I think an estimate of 10,000 as aggregating the 
total number would not be an exaggeration. In the various 
branches of the cigar trade there are about 1,000 employed. 
There are between 500 and 1,000 peddlers and keepers of 
stands, the number varying according to the season of the 
year. Factory workmen, shop keepers of various kinds, 
clerks and salesmen, girls in cigar, cigarette, and other fac- 
tories, in shops and in stores, make up the bulk of the re- 
mainder of the population. Then there are the workmen 
in the ordinary vocations v\^hich every population affords, 
and finally, the professional class. There are a number 
of young men studying for the professions, so that within 
the near future the list of the latter will be largely in- 
creased. 

A survey of the section in which the Russian Jewish peo- 
ple reside reveals, on the outside, far less evidence of the 
presence of the sweatshops and their workers than one 
would imagine from reading lurid newspaper descriptions. 
But this will not seem so strange when it is understood that 
much of the work of the needle industries is done in the 
homes, — and some of the worst results, both from the eco- 
nomic and the sanitary standpoints, are in consequence of 
home work, — and that there is no attempt to display large 
signs advertising the business, as would be the case with 
factories and mills of other industries and in other dis- 
tricts. One must often sedulously seek the shops in order 
to find them. 

It is significant that in the reports of the factory inspec- 
tors all the shops with w^hich we are dealing are designated 
as sweatshops; garment and cigar factories are all under 
this head, and it is only in the details of the reports that a 
distinction is made as to the sanitary condition being good, 
fair, or bad. 

We enter a sweatshop on Lombard, Bainbridge, Monroe 
or South Fourth Street. It may be on one of several floors 



PHILADELPHIA 125 

in which similar work is going on. The shop is that of the 
so-called contractor — one who contracts with the manu- 
facturer to put his garments together after they have been 
cut by the cutter. The pieces are taken in bundles from 
the manufacturer's to the contractor's. Each contractor 
usually undertakes the completion of one sort — pants, 
coats, vests, knee pants, or children's jackets. There is 
probably one whole floor devoted to the making of this one 
kind of garment. It may be that two contractors divide 
the space of a floor, the one, perhaps, being a pants con- 
tractor, and the other a vest contractor, with an entirely 
distinct set of employees. To his employees the contractor 
is the '* boss," as you find out when you inquire at the 
shop. Before you have reached the shop, you have prob- 
ably climbed one, two, or three flights of stairs, littered 
with debris. You readily recognize the entrance to one of 
these shops once inside the building. The room is likely to 
be ill-smelling and badly ventilated : the workers are afraid 
of draughts. Consequently, an abnormally bad air is 
breathed which it is difficult for the ordinary person to 
stand long. Thus result the tubercular and other diseases 
which the immigrant acquires in his endeavor to work out 
his economic existence. 

There are the operator at the machine, the presser at the 
ironing table, the baster and the finisher with their nee- 
dles — the latter young women — all bending their backs 
and straining their eyes over the garments the people wear, 
many working long hours in busy season for a compensa- 
tion that hardly enables them to live, and in dull season, 
not knowing how they will get along at all. 

If we apply our ordinary standards of sanitation to 
these shops they certainly come below such standards. By 
frequent visits we may grow accustomed to the sights and 
smells, and perhaps unconsciously assume that such shops 
must in the nature of things be in bad condition. But a 
little reflection will readily show the error of such an as- 
sumption. 

It is all the more harrowing that the workers have a 
tenacity of life due to a rich inheritance of vitality, and 
that through sickness and disease, through squalor and 
filth, they proceed onward, often managing to pull them- 
selves out of the economic slough, though retaining, per- 
haps, the defects of bad physical development and sur- 
roundings. 



12G ECONOMIC AND INFjUSTBTAL CONDITION 

But thei^e is a larger social question involved. The 
community at large incurs a danger through the germs of 
disease whieli a dirty shop may spread in the garments it 
turns out. And so the government steps in to inspect the 
shops, supposedly requiring them to conform to certain 
sanitary regulations, both because of the health of the em- 
ployees and of the community generally. But, as a matter 
of fact, most of the contractors' shops that I visited are 
really not good places to work in. The best result of in- 
specting them by the gov.ernment inspector would be to 
" inspect " them out of existence. But the law and the 
human instriunents of the law are not strong enough for 
that. The inspection force is ludicrously inadequate for 
the large number of places to be looked after, so that, with 
the best intentions, the inspectors must feel themselves 
helpless. The law, as it reads, would seem to be stringent 
enough. It requires that before work of the kind under 
consideration can go on in a place, the employer must have 
a permit from the inspector '' stating the maximum num- 
ber of persons allowed to be employed therein and that the 
building, or part of building, intended to be used for such 
work or business is thoroughly clean, sanitary and fit for 
occupancy for such work or business." Not less than 250 
cubic feet of air space are to be allowed for each person, 
and " there shall be sufficient means of ventilation pro- 
vided in each workroom." Manufacturers are required to 
have the permit produced before giving work to a con- 
tractor. There is a penalty attached to v/orking without 
such permit. The manufacturer shields himself behind t\v? 
permit issued to the contractor. The contractor likewise. 
As ever, form without spirit is deadening, and so the con- 
science of the community must be more thoroughly aroused 
before there is a real remedy of the conditions. We have 
here another illustration of how politics, v/hich is satisfied 
with putting laws on the statute books and executing them 
through inadequate agencies appointed through the usual 
influences, menaces the health and economic condition of 
a community, failing to realize the larger purpose which 
would compel an intelligent carrying out of the law, or 
a clear demonstration of its failure if it is inadequate. 

It should be added, by way of information, that besides 
the Russian Jews the largest other element in the needle 
industries referred to is the Italian; and certain lines of 



PHILADELPHIA 127 

goods made by Jews are sometimes handed over to Italians 
for finishing. 

The shops are chiefly conducted by the contractors, en- 
tirely independent of the manufacturers, and the various 
manufacturers for whom they work assume no liability 
with reference to them or their employees. They merely 
agree to pay so much per piece for the garments they give 
out, and expect the garments to be returned to their estab- 
lishments as agreed upon by the contractors. Few in this 
city have " inside " shops, that is, shops in which the en- 
tire garment is completed inside the establishment, or in a 
separate building, under their own supervision. Wherever 
these inside shops have beeii established the conditions are 
very much better ; the shop is much cleaner, the light good, 
the air bearable, and the compensation usually more steady. 

The last statement requires elucidation. In one clothing 
manufacturing establishment, there is in the rear a so-called 
inside shop with a regular contractor in charge. The firm 
furnishes its first work to this contractor and thus enables 
him to give, in turn, steady employment, but claims it could 
not extend such a shop without adding considerably to the 
expense, as the rental and the assurance of regularity in- 
volve a larger outlay than arranging with contractors who 
compete on the basis of low rentals and the smallest possible 
expense. 

Another firm has some of its high-grade work completed 
by inside hands, and here, too, the conditions are good, be- 
ing more akin to the inside shops of the cloak trade. 

One establishment for the manufacture of uniforms has 
a large building as an inside shop, devoted to the completion 
of the, garments as they come from the hands of the cutters. 
Here were '' sets " of workers (a *' set "is usually an oper- 
ator, a presser, and a finisher) who agreed to complete a 
garment for a certain gross sum, dividing the receipts ac- 
cording to a pro rata agreement, one of them being respon- 
sible for the work. The light and air were good, and the 
workers had the use of electric motor power. 

In this connection, it should be noted with congratulation 
that one of the largest clothing firms has a factory in the 
southern section of the city that utilizes the services of about 
a thousand employees, who come more immediately under 
the supervision of the manufacturer. This will do away with 
a small body of contractors and their shops, and with many 
evil features consequent upon their maintenance. 



128 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTBIAL CONDITION 

An analysis of the wages of the employees in the various 
divisions of the garment industry collected chiefly in 1901 
follows : 

Through the kindness of one of the large trouser contrac- 
tors, I am enabled to state exactly the amount which each 
class of worker in his shop received in a year 's time ending 
in the spring of 1901. But the amounts thus paid out, it 
should be borne in mind, are of the highest range, inasmuch 
as this contractor had work during the entire year, whereas 
the usual employment in the contractors' shops during the 
same period did not equal more than about 28 full weeks' 
work. It has been calculated that for the year in question 
the amount of work which was available for the average 
worker did not amount to more than about v/hat would be 
equal to 28 weeks' full time. That is to say, there 
might be employment for some period for every working 
day of the week, and for other periods for a smaller number 
of days per week and but for a partial number of hours 
per day, and sometimes practically no work. 

We have here, too, an estimate as to what one of the 
fastest operators in the city can earn. He was employed at 
his trade 39 weeks, having been in some other employment 
during 13 weeks of the year given. He worked on 4171 
pairs of trousers in that time, or an average of 108 per 
week, and received during the period $543.25, or an aver- 
age of $13.93 per week, being equal to 13 cents per pair. In 
the same shop a second operator, working 52 weeks in the 
year on 4,680 pairs of trousers, or 90 pairs per week, re- 
ceived $590.55, which is an average of $11.36 per week, not 
quite 13 cents per pair. A third, working 42 weeks on 3,504 
pairs, received $509.59, or an average of 83 pairs, at $12.13 
per week. Though his average per week is higher than the 
one before, he is not as well off for the year. 

Records from trouser operators in other shops show that 
the average earnings per year were considerably below this 
owing to but partial employment. Payment is by the piece, 
from 10 to 121/2 cents being a fair average price. A full 
wreck's work will see the completion of perhaps 80 pairs. 
The average workman will receive at the end of the week, 
in full time, therefore, about $10. As the year's work (up 
to the spring of 1901) did not amount to more than 28 
weeks, the yearly earnings were not more than about $280, 
or an average of about $5.40 in the week. 

A vest operator is paid about 9 cents per garment. He 



PHILADELPHIA 129 

can complete about 120 per week, which at $10.80 for 28 
weeks would make about $300 per year. Statements from 
operators in various shops show that with a full week's work 
they earn about this sum, some of the best earning a little 
more. But, as the year's work amounted to only 28 weeks, 
the earnings per year would be about $300 a year, or an 
average of about $6 per week. 

The results as to coat operators were about the same. 
They earned from. $15 to $18 per week, but had not more 
than about 20 weeks ' work, so that their earnings were from 
$300 to $360 per year, or an average of not much more than 
$6 per week. 

In children's jackets, the earnings were from $4 to $12 a 
week; a year's work was equal to 30 weeks, making from 
$120 to $360 per year, or an average of from $2.30 to $6.90 
per week. The average payment would equal about $5 per 
week. 

In knee pants, the earnings for operators were from $9 
to $10 in a full week. The number of weeks' employment 
was about 25, and the earnings per year were from $200 to 
$250, an average of from $4 to $5 per week. 

Proceeding in the same way with reference to pressers, 
we have our trouser contractor's record of $1,265.77 paid 
out to three pressers in 43 weeks, or an average of $9.81 for 
each man, and $330.44 paid out to four pressers in the re- 
maining 9 weeks of the year, or an average of $9.18 per 
man. This, be it remembered, is for the exceptional shop 
with full employment the year round. Returns from inter- 
viewing men in other shops showed earnings of from $5 to 
$10, or $12 in a full week. With 28 weeks' work in the 
year the earnings for the year would be from $140 to $336. 
The average was about midway between these figures, or 
$4.50 per week. 

Vest pressers averaged about 31/2 cents per garment and 
complete about 300 in a week, which is equal to $10.50, and 
for a year of 28 weeks averaged a little over $300. Actual 
records from vest shops showed earnings for pressers of 
from $9 to $14, which, with 28 weeks' actual work, would 
make the average about $300 per year, or $6 per week. 

The earnings of coat pressers were about on a par with 
those of the vest pressers, averaging not more than $300 
per year, or $6 per week. 

Those on the children 's jackets trade earned between $200 
and $300 per year, or an average of from $4 to $6 per week. 



130 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

Knee pants pressers earned from $150 to $200 per year, 
or from $3 to $4 per week, on the average. 

The trouser baster of the same contractor from whom 
data as to other employees were obtained received in a year 
$287.91, or an average of $5.54 per week. He had practic- 
ally full work the year round. Assuming the work for the 
usual baster in a shop to have been equal to 28 weeks, the 
pay on the average, for the year, would not have been more 
than about $170, or a little over $3 per week. 

For vest basters, the average from a number of shops 
showed about the same result as for the trouser baster — 
from $150 to $200 per year, or a weekly average of between 
$3 and $4. 

Among the coat basters, earnings were higher. The men 
who do the basting are the chief mechanics on the garment. 
Some earned as much at $350, but the average for the ma- 
jority was about $300, which is approximately equal to a 
weekly average of $6. 

On children's jackets, basters and fitters earned from 
$250 to $300 per year, or an average of from $5 to $6 per 
week. 

Coming now to finishers — who are young women — our 
trouser contractor 's returns on which we have drawn before 
showed the following payments respectively to three finish- 
ers whom he employed the whole year: $220.99, or an 
average of $4.25 per week ; $215.95, or an average of $4.15 
per week; $205.25, or an average of $3.97 per week. The 
ordinary finisher, however, having but 28 weeks' work, 
would earn not more than $100, $125 or $150 per year, or 
between $2 and $3 per week, on the average. 

Average returns from vest shops showed earnings of 
about $150 per year, equaling $3 per week. There were a 
few who earned higher wages. 

An average calculation based on returns from coat shops 
showed practically the same result — not more than $150 
per year, or $3 per week. 

The same is the case among the children's jacket workers. 

In all these instances, it should be noted, that in a full 
week individual earnings may be higher, but when com- 
puted for the year the average worker's earnings will not 
be above the sums indicated. 

We have presented the earning capacity of the chief 
classes of piece workers in the clothing trade. There are, 
however, other employees, paid usually by the week, and 



nilLADELPHIA 131 

there are, of course, other outlays on the part of the 
contractor. 

Viewing the subject now from the standpoint of the con- 
tractor, let us estimate the cost of the garments to him, and 
his net gain. Taking the figures of our standard trouser 
contractor, we find that he made 21,157 pairs in the year, or 
an average of 407 pairs per week, and that his payments per 
pair averaged as follows : Operating, 12.9 cents ; pressing, 
7.5 cents; finishing, 6.6 cents; tacking and button holing, 
2.2 cents ; basting, 1.3 cents. Adding to these items his esti- 
mate of 2 cents for shop expenses, including rent, coal and 
gas, and 1 cent for errand and delivery service, we have a 
total of 33% cents. He received from the manufacturer 
between 35 and 40 cents per pair, according to the nature 
of the garment. Assuming an average of 371/2 cents, his 
profit was 4 cents per pair, making more than $800 per 
year, or some $16 per week. 

Another trouser contractor paid out 20 cents per gar- 
ment for operating, basting, finishing and tacking. He re- 
ceived from 32 to 35 cents. He could turn out about 250 
per week. Taking an average, the $33.75 per week is sub- 
ject to a deduction of $3.50 for rent and other expenses, 
leaving slightly over $30 per week, which, on the basis of 
28 weeks' work would be $840 per year, or an average 
earning of about $16 per week. 

Similarily, let us accept the following calculation by a 
vest contractor of the cost to him of a garment : Foreman, 
4 cents; operator, 15 cents; baster, 10 cents; hand button- 
hole maker, 15 cents ; finisher, 3 cents ; presser, 4 cents ; er- 
rand boy, 4 cents ; total 56 cents. He received 60 cents from 
the manufacturer. He could turn out about 800 vests in a 
week. To his expenditures are to be added rent, fuel and 
light. His net earnings in a full week were, perhaps, $25. 
But if he has but 28 weeks' work in a year the total would 
be not more than about $700, or an average of $14 per week. 
This corresponds fairly well with the statement of another 
vest contractor that net earnings would be from $13 to $18 
per week. A third vest contractor who paid an average of 
23 cents per garment to his operator, baster, finisher, and 
presser, and who could turn out about 600 garments in a 
week, received 27% cents for them. From the average of 
$25 per week there must be deducted rental ($13 per 
month) and other expenses, leaving, possibly, $20 earnings 



132 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

for a full week ; $560 for a year, on a basis of 28 weeks, or 
an average of $11 per week. 

The contractor is usually an operator or other worker 
who becomes imbued with the desire to set up for himself. 
Excessive competition among* the small contractors has con- 
tributed to the bad economic state of affairs in the garment 
trades. The contractor is between the upper mill-stone of 
the manufacturer and the nether mill-stone of the work- 
man, forced to take the prices of the one and trying to 
make the utmost possible out of the other. Some few have 
saved enough to become manufacturers themselves. Some 
of the old established manufacturing firms have retired 
from business as the result of the competition of this new 
element. 

In actual money gains, the contractors whose earnings 
have been estimated are better off than their workmen. 
Many said that if they could get their little capital back 
they would probably return to their former occupation — 
at least for a time, for the desire to be a '' boss " is strong 
and would doubtless lead to other attempts. 

In the cloak trades we find a somewhat better state of 
affairs than in the clothing. The shop is part of the plant 
of the manufacturer himself and under his direct sur- 
veillance. Besides being well lighted and ventilated the 
shops have machine power. There is in this trade compara- 
tively little work given out to contractors, though there is 
some, especially in busy seasons. 

An operator on first class ladies' cloaks and suits earns 
about $30 in a full week's time, and as there is about half 
year's work in a year, his earnings are about $750 per year, 
or an average of $20 per week. 

A presser on first class work averages about $18 per week 
a full week, but as the work in a year is not more than about 
two-thirds time, the earnings are about $700 per year, a 
weekly average of $14. 

Finishers (girls) average about $8, in a full week, have 
about 30 weeks' work and, therefore, earn about $240 per 
year. 

In the clothing trade the yearly earnings ranged from 
$125 for finishers (who are young women), to $360 for 
operators, with $300 as the average for the majority, be- 
tween these being the basters at $175, and the pressers at 
$250. 

In the cloak trade, the conditions, as has been noted, are 



PHILADELPHIA 133 

better not only with respect to the physical but the economic 
status as well. 

The condition of the cigar makers is much better, on the 
whole, than that of the workers in the needle industries. 
Earnings of between $500 and $600 per year, or an average 
of from $10 to $12 per week, would be a fair estimate. 

The people are branching out into various trades, but 
there are none which employ such large numbers or in 
which the conditions are peculiar, so as to call for specific 
mention. 

Peddling is an occupation into which new immigrants 
easily enter. Many earn a very precarious livelihood. Some 
develop into retail tradesmen. 

A noticable tendency to go into the profession of medi- 
cine is to be observed. Many a Russian Jew with intel- 
lectual ability will be laying plans to go from the shop 
into medical practice. Law, dentistry and pharmacy are 
the other favorite professions. 

Some of the Russian Jewish people are rising to com- 
fortable positions in the professions and commerce. Among 
the employers of labor there are several doing thousands of 
dollars' worth of business yearly. There are merchants 
and manufacturers, some who still live in the southern sec- 
tion of the city, others who have moved up town, among the 
prosperous elements of the community. Economically, they 
can, of course, now take care of themselves, but their rise 
upwards has often been severe and hazardous. 

Real estate purchases are a growing element in the eco- 
nomic progress of the population ; many a comfortable sum 
is made through their means. 

Some of the bank accounts would astonish the unknow- 
ing. So, too, the growing number of those who become 
insured is indicative of foresightedness and prosperity. 
One Russian Jev/ish insurance agent in the down-town dis- 
trict has a number of insured which would surprise those 
who know merely the outward aspects of the district. 

From our examination of the conditions of the needle 
industries, the keen and difficult struggle that is going on 
among the masses is readily seen. Many an one used to a 
well-to-do existence can hardly conceive how some of the 
men get along on their slender incomes, for they often must 
support a large family. Instances are familiar in which a 
worker has a whole bevy of children, all too young to assist 



134 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

in mretinj* the wants of a family, and the wife with her 
hands full looking after the needs of the little ones. 

In busy season the employees are required to work long 
hours, sometimes as high as fifteen, perhaps eighteen, a day. 
In slack season they must wait for the work that is doled 
out to them. Where time enters at all into the measure- 
ment of the pay, the employers endeavor to stretch it with- 
out giving corresponding pay. There seem to be numerous 
devices by which the workers can be taken advantage of. 
The character of the work varies so much in any one trade 
that it seems difficult to regulate the prices unless by the 
most iron-clad arrangement, backed by the force of strong 
organization. But the weakness of the organizations has 
been apparent in the past. Sometimes they have been affili- 
ated with one general labor organization, sometimes 
with another. They are now welded together under 
the United Garment Workers of America, into which they 
liave gone during the past few years. With the exception 
of the Cutters' Union the membership of these organiza- 
tions is almost entirely composed of Russian Jews. 

The competition of unorganized labor, especially of wom- 
en and of people in the country towns, makes the regulation 
of the trade exceedingly difficult, and tends, of course, to 
the aggravation of the conditions regarding hours and 
wages. 

Surveying the entire field, emphasis has been laid on the 
conditions in the needle industries, because of their impor- 
tance as to the numbers dependent upon them and their 
peculiar economic arrangements. The displacement of tlie 
outside shops alleviates the sanitary and economic condi- 
tions. Many of the contractors, as foremen or superin- 
tendents, are enabled to earn as much in wages as they 
formerly did in a mad endeavor to obtain profits ; and their 
competition for prices being removed, there is a steadier 
regulation as between the workers and the manufacturers. 
Factories as part of the plant of the manufacturers, with 
control by them, assisted by government inspection, and the 
abrogation of the contractors ' shops, enable a better regula- 
tion of hours and wages. 

We have, then, a population of much intellectual and 
moral strength capable of large economic advance, requir- 
ing better physical influences and checks on individualistic 
tendencies. 



(C) CHICAGO 

Probably among no nationality does the economic condi- 
tion change more rapidly than among the Russian Jewish 
people in the United States. The transition period from 
the junk peddler to the iron yard owner, from the dry 
goods peddler to the retail or wholesale dry goods mer- 
chant, from the cloak maker to the cloak manufacturer, is 
comparatively short. True, the same causes which influ- 
ence trade and industry in the economic world about them 
also influence this population, yet they seem able to develop 
business methods of their own, which, in many instances, 
successfully defy or modify well established economic laws. 
They can do business with little money, or practically no 
money, right next door to a large house, ignoring the eco- 
nomic rule that the latter, through competition, drives the 
smaller house out of business. They continue to hold their 
own in the trades in which they engage, growing in 
strength as the years go on. 

'' A Jew would rather earn five dollars a week doing 
business for himself than ten dollars a week working for 
some one else," was the observation of an Irishman who 
worked in the same factory with me. This idea is held 
quite extensively among the Russian Jewish people, as my 
own experience among them will confirm. Quite a large 
proportion of the men who worked with me in the same 
trade ten or fifteen years ago are now in business for them- 
selves or have entered professional life. Others have be- 
come salesmen, traveling men, commission agents, insurance 
agents, and the like. I have met very few wage-workers 
among Russian Jewish people who regard it as their perma- 
nent lot in life to remain in the condition of laborers for 
wage. Almost all are bending their energies to get into 
business or to acquire an education so that they may fit 
themselves for some other calling than that of the wage- 
worker of the ordinary kind. More of our boys and girls 
who have attended the public schools enter stores and offi- 
ces than shops and factories. This is especially true of the 

135 



136 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

more intelligent of the population. Among those who stay- 
in the shops as workmen there is a tendency to leave em- 
ployments which require hard labor. 

Scattered through the industries in this large city, Rus- 
sian Jewish people are to be found in a large variety of 
occupations, from the common laborers to the highly skilled 
mechanics. I find them employed as iron molders, ma- 
chinists, locomotive engineers, sailors, farm helpers, boiler 
makers, butchers at the stock yards, street sweepers, section 
hands on railroads, motormen and conductors on the street 
cars; a number as building laborers — brick layers, carpen- 
ters, steam fitters, plumbers; in bicycle plating shops; in 
manufactories of electrical appliances, of iron beds and 
springs, of shoes, of wood work, and of upholstery ; in tin, 
mattress and picture frame factories ; and in bakeries. But 
the industries in which they are employed in the greatest 
numbers are the sewing and cigar trades. 

I gather from my connection with the trade union move- 
ment and from my observation while inspecting factories 
for the state of Illinois for four years, that the Russian 
Jewish people in Chicago have not nearly so great an in- 
fluence on the sewing and cigar trades as in the east, par- 
ticularly in New York. There are eight non-Jews to one 
Jew employed in the needle industries in Chicago. The 
proportion of non-Jews to Jews among the cigar makers is 
not quite so large. It can only be said, therefore, that the 
Russian Jews are an important factor in these trades. 
Among the mattress makers, too, concerning trade regula- 
tions, they must be regarded as an element to be reckoned 
with. 

The sanitary condition of the streets, homes, and shops in 
the Jewish settlement proper is rather bad. It does not 
compare favorably with that of the other nationalities, ex- 
cept the Italian and the Polish, which in some respects are 
worse. The streets and homes of the Italians are somewhat 
dirtier, and the Polish crowd their people in the shops and 
homes more than the Jews. Compared with the Germans, 
the Scandinavians, and the Bohemians, the Russian Jews 
make a poor showing, their places of abode and of work 
being dirtier and more crowded. However, a change for 
the better is taking place, at least in respect to the sani- 
tary condition of the shops. Separate buildings are being 
erected, so that before many years we shall have outgrown 
many abuses as to sanitation. I have known many men to 



CHICAGO 137 

be willing to work for smaller wages in better quarters. A 
busy season with good wages tends to improve the sanitary- 
condition, whereas dull times and small wages have a con- 
trary effect. 

Probably nowhere is the peculiar character of the Rus- 
sian Jewish people better to be seen than in the trade union 
movement, or rather, in the absence of this movement. One 
cannot ascribe the condition of the trade unions among 
them solely to their racial character, as many other factors 
help to form their economic status and its relations to labor 
organizations. The nature of the trades in which they are 
engaged and the helplessness of the majority of the people 
are among the factors affecting the situation. 

One of the main reasons why they do not support trade 
unions and labor organizations to the same extent as other 
nationalities seems to be that most of them do not believe 
themselves to be working men for life, nor do they think 
that they will leave as a heritage to their children the lot 
of a wage-worker. A very large number speculate on the 
notion of opening, in course of time, a shop for themselves, 
or going into business of some kind, or educating themselves 
out of the condition of the working classes. A large part 
of the tolerance of low wages, long hours of work, and in- 
sanitary condition of the shops, that is, of the tragedy of 
economic servitude, of poverty, and of suffering, is to be 
ascribed to this state of mind. 

Of other elements that interfere with the chances of 
effective organization, the fact that in the sewing trade 
women can and do replace men must be considered. Es- 
pecially during strikes have they taken the place of men in 
a large number of cases, and have thrown Jewish men and 
women out of employment. The trades in which the Rus- 
sian Jews are largely engaged are easily learned, especially 
by women and children, so that there is a constant re- 
cruiting of newcomers of all nationalities, thus overstock- 
ing the trades with labor. 

Generally speaking, the sewing trades in this city are in 
a deplorable state. There is little organization among the 
workmen. The reason for this among the Jewish people 
is not the same as among other nationalities. With the 
Poles and some of the Germans and Bohemians, the church 
and the priests are factors in keeping them in an ignorant, 
helpless, and '' scabbing " state of mind, but the Jewish 
people are clever and quite well informed, so that the cause 



138 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

lias been not ignorance but unwillingness to make the 
sacrifice necessary to bring about successful organization. 
There is, however, some change for the better in progress. 
They are beginning to realize, slowly, but surely, that their 
hope economically, lies in alliance with the labor unions and 
the socialist movement, and they will become a factor, I be- 
lieve, in establishing the state of affairs in which labor 
will be free and receive what it produces. 

It should be noted, too, in modification of the general 
statement as to unwillingness to organize: First, that 
during actual strikes Jews have been much more loyal 
and self sacrificing than other nationalities. I know of 
many men, who, during strikes, with no bread for them- 
selves or their families, attended meetings and insisted 
on holding out until the strike was won. Second, a large 
number are in unions of their trades, and many are ac- 
tive in leadership. Third, in the socialist movement, a few 
have been very active and have carried on propaganda at 
a great sacrifice. 

In all there are probably 4,000 Eussian Jews engaged in 
the sewing trades in Chicago, less than one-eighth of the 
total. The majority of men employees have an income of 
from $400 to $600 per year. Several hundred Russian 
Jews are either contractors or manufacturers. The Jewish 
contractor who employs Jewish help is not so prosperous, 
as a rule, as his neighbor, the Jewish contractor who em- 
ploys Gentile help, or the Gentile contractor. The reason 
seems to be that among the Poles and Bohemians, of whom 
there are many in these trades, women and children are 
employed to a much greater extent than among the Jews, 
and one cannot get adult males to work as cheaply as wom- 
en and children. A number of Jewish contractors have 
moved into neighborhoods where they are enabled to em- 
ploy Polish, German, and Bohemian women and children, 
and they are prospering. But those who are in the First 
Ward, or in the Jewish district, are simply making a living 
a little better than their em.ployees. 

About 1,500 of those in the sewing trades are engaged 
in ''country order" coat making, a cheaper grade of cus* 
torn coat making. The work is done according to the fac- 
tory system of division of labor, as distinguished from cus- 
tom work, in which the tailor makes the whole garment. 
During the past three years, the employees have had work 
from six to nine months in the year. They have earned 



CHICAGO 139 

about the following wages. Operators from $11 to $25 
per week; helpers (to operators), from $5 to $12 per 
week; basters, from $10 to $18 per week; helpers (to bast- 
ers), from $5 to $10 per week; pressers, from $10 to $18 
per week; helpers (to pressers), from $4 to $8 per week. 
The high priced men are about as one to four in a sho]). 
The cutters in this trade receive about $15 to $18 per week, 
and the designers and foremen from $30 to $40 per week. 
There is no union in the trade, excepting a small mutual 
benefit society. This trade competes successfully, I think, 
with the country merchant tailoring and with ready-made 
manufacture of clothing. During busy season the hours 
are long, as high as twelve and thirteen hours a day. The 
work is mostly piece work. This and cloak making are 
considered the best of the sewing trades. Polish and Bo- 
hemian women and children compete as workers, but the 
Jewish men are holding their own as yet, because they 
can adjust themselves better to the seasons of the trade. 

It should be borne in mind that the rates of payment here 
given are for a full week's work. Therefore an operator 
who earns $11 in a full week will not earn more than 
between $300 and $350 in a year or an average of between 
$6 and $7 per week. The same applies to the other classes 
of workmen, so that the average weekly wages are much 
lower than would appear on the face of things. 

The next division is the ready-made coat making trade. 
In the past few years the Jews have been replaced by Poles 
and Bohemians, so that there are not more than about 300 
of the former. There were formerly about 1,000. Their 
wages are considerably less than those of the "country 
order " division, operators being paid from $10 to $15 
per week, basters from $9 to $13 per week, pressers the 
same as basters, helpers ranging from $4 to $9 per week, 
hand sewers from $2 to $8 per week. There are about nine 
or ten months' work in a year. An operator earns, there- 
fore, about $400 per year on the average, which is equal to 
$8 per week. The average weekly earnings for the other 
workmen are subject to a corresponding reduction. 

Both in the ready-made and in the country order, the 
machines are run by foot power. The shops, as a rule, 
are not in very good condition. 

About 200 Russian Jews are employed as custom coat 
makers proper, working for merchant tailors. They make 



140 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

the whole garment. Their earnings are from $12 to $18 
per week and they work about nine months a year. 

These and workers in the country order division often 
become small merchant tailors, both in Chicago and in 
the country towns. Some have become well-to-do. Among 
them are merchant tailors in prominent sections of the city 
worth from $10,000 to $15,000. 

There are about 250 Russian Jews among the ladies' 
tailors, making both suits and outer garments to measure. 
The operators earn from $15 to $20 per week and have 
from six to nine months' work in the year. The yearly 
earnings are, therefore, from $400 to $700, or an average 
of from $8 to $14 per week. A large number keep shops 
for themselves and are doing a good business. One has 
acquired about $20,000 worth of property during the past 
eight years. The foremen, designers, and cutters in this 
trade receive about $30 per week. 

Ladies' cloaks and suit making is quite a large industry 
among the population we are describing. About 800 are 
employed in it. This is a season trade, with good wages 
in the busy season and very low wages in the dull season. 
In the cheaper and partly in the medium grades of this 
business, the Jews have lost their hold during the last few 
years. This is due to the establishment of shops employ- 
ing girls, among the Polish and Bohemian people. In 
the better grades they still hold on. In these, during the 
busy season, they earn from $12 to $25 a week, in slack 
season from $9 to $14 a week, working mostly ten hours 
per day. There is about eight months' work. 

Steam is being introduced in place of foot power, so 
that if the Jewish people are not replaced by women this 
trade seems likely to offer them a decent livelihood. 
Women earn from $4 to $9 per week. It should be noted, 
too, that competition with New York affects this trade. 

No trade requires the influence of a labor organization 
more than this. The cloak makers lost a severely con- 
tested strike several years ago and they do not seem to 
have been able to organize themselves since that time. 
There are about 50 Russian Jewish cloak cutters who are 
paid about $18 per week. A number of the designers are 
from this population. Their wages are $50 a week and 
upwards. Some of the Russian Jewish people have gone 
into the manufacture of cloaks on a small scale. The 
wealthiest is worth probably $10,000. 



CHICAGO 141 

The cap makers are doing fairly well. They earn from 
$9 to $18 per week. They seem to have withstood the 
competition of women. When they have saved from $200 
to $300 they open shops of their o^vn. There are about 200 
employers. The wealthiest is worth in the neighborhood 
of $10,000. 

The children's coats, the men's trousers, the knee pants, 
the overalls, and the shirt trades seem to be the poorest 
the population are engaged in. Operators in these trades 
earn from $5 to $11 per week, with about nine months' 
work throughout the year; girls (helpers) from $2 to $5 
per week ; pressers from $5 to $9 per week, working about 
the same time. 

Most of the contractors who employ Jewish help are 
poor men themselves. Two or three who employ Polish 
girls have made enough money to earn their homes and 
shops. Those who have gone into the business of man- 
ufacturing knee pants, pants, overalls, and children's cloth- 
ing have, in a number of cases, done better. The wealthiest 
is probably worth about $10,000. Altogether, there are 
about 400 Russian Jews in these trades. 

Furriers are earning from $12 to $18 per week and work 
about nine months in the year. There are about 50 Russian 
Jews among them. 

To summarize the history of the trade union movement 
in the foregoing trades: The cloak makers had an organ- 
ization ten years, disbanded, and reorganized. They had a 
number of strikes. The influence of the union on the trade 
was beneficial. From 1881 to 1889, the workers were em- 
ployed from twelve to sixteen hours per day. The union 
and the strikes brought down the working day to nine or 
ten hours. Wages are better than they were in those years. 

The cloak makers' union was the first to have a public 
meeting to protest against sweatshops and the employ- 
ment of children, and together with the central labor 
organization, Mrs. Florence Kelley and residents of Hull 
House, succeeded in having a law passed prohibiting the 
employment of children under fourteen years of age, and 
the employment at trade in one 's own home of persons other 
than members of the family. 

The coat makers had an organization which was help- 
ful in the improvement of their economic condition, but 
a lost strike broke them up. Bohemians, Germans, and 
Jews were organized in the trade. Through a lock-out of 



142 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

the clothing* cutters, in 1897, tlie nnions were forced out 
on strike, and after six weeks were defeated by the manu- 
facturers, who were able to replace the men by women's 
labor, half-Americanized, and newly-arrived foreign la- 
bor. 

Knee pants makers, pants makers and children's coat 
makers were also organized, and their organizations were 
rendered useless through similar agencies. 

In the cigar and tobacco trades, there are in this city 
about 2,400 Russian Jews. A fair proportion are in busi- 
ness for themselves, as store keepers or manufacturers 
or both. About 1,500 men and 500 women cigar makers 
earn from $300 to $600 per year. A large number who 
work in the heart of the Jewish district earn only about 
$300 to $400. Persons learning the trade earn $3, $4 and 
$5 a week. There is employment about nine months in 
the year. During the crisis from 1893 to 1897 there 
was work for not more than four or five months in the 
year, and the wages were lower per week. 

There are a comparatively small number of Russian Jew- 
ish workers in the cigarmakers' union, about 200 out of 
a total membership of 1,800. One reason is that the cigars 
made in the Jewish district are of a cheaper grade than is 
provided for in the union scale. Then, too, in the large 
cigar factories, which do not employ union help, they work 
with other nationalities. The difference between the union 
price and the factory price is large, from $3 to $7 per thou- 
sand. The union has had several strikes in these factories 
and has lost each time. Most of the cigars in Chicago are 
made in the large factories. Employment in the factories 
is steadier than in the small union shops. The union 
keeps its wages for labor so high because there is a large 
demand for the union label. One of the reasons why the 
price of labor in the non-union shops is so low is because 
the trade is comparatively easy to learn, and women and 
children can take the place of men. 

Probably the wealthiest Russian Jewish cigar manu- 
facturer is worth about $20,000, and from this one they 
run down to the man who keeps shop at night and works 
in a factory during the day, or for whom the wife keeps 
a little store while he works out. 

The business of manufacturing cigarettes and smoking 
tobacco employs about 200 Russian Jews. The workers 
barely make a living. Men earn from $7 to $12 a week; 



CHICAGO 143 

girls from $4 to $8. The employers are only moderately 
thriving, as the revenue and municipal taxes heavily affect 
their incomes. 

There are about 80 Russian Jewish mattress makers. 
They earn: men from $9 to $14; women, from $4 to $8 
per week. Jews have displaced other nationalities in this 
trade, mainly the Irish. They were organized with other 
nationalities in a union. A union label was introduced, 
wages were raised, and the union was maintained for 
three years. Then, through the machinations of some 
of the employers, the union was split and two organiza- 
tions were formed, one composed of Jews and one of non- 
Jews. The Jewish union joined hands with the employers 
and formed what was really a ' ^ scab ' ' organization. 

The Russian Jewish bakers number about 50 in all. 
They work unreasonably long hours for very small wages 
— about $5 to $13 a week — in very bad bake-shops. They 
established a union several times, but were disorganized 
for a reason similar to the one just described: Jewish 
employers introduced non-Jews and kept the good union 
men out of work for a long time. 

From 400 to 600 are in the picture frame, tin can, and 
bicycle factories. They earn from $7 to $15 a week and 
assimilate quite rapidly with other nationalities in the 
trades. Some of the large picture frame factories and 
quite a number of picture frame stores are owned by Rus- 
sian Jews. It is said some of the owners are worth $100,- 
000. 

In the professions, there are a number of physicians, 
dentists, lawyers and teachers. 

There are also mail carriers, post-office clerks, and hold- 
ers of office under the state and city governments. 

Perhaps from 2,500 to 3,000 are clerks in stores and of- 
fices, book-keepers, stock keepers and in kindred occupa- 
tions, ranging from the lowest paid shipping clerk to the 
high-salaried department store manager. One is supposed 
to attain business training in the stores and offices, and 
there is a tendency to overstock this class of help, so the 
good salesman or good book-keeper is likely to receive a 
smaller salary than an experienced mechanic or worker at 
a trade. 

Among the peddlers and small store-keepers, the rag ped- 
dlers form the largest group. Most of them are very poor 
and hard working; they earn a precarious livelihood. I 



144 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTBIAL CONDITION 

am told there are about 2,000. Very few of their chil- 
dren follow in their footsteps; most work in stores and 
some in factories. From the rag peddling business about 
200 have become rag store-keepers. A large proportion of 
these own their own homes. The wealthiest is said to be 
worth about $20,000. The rag store cannot well be es- 
tablished with a capital of less than about $400. 

Some 95 per cent, of the peddlers own their own horse 
and wagon; some of them, however, are so poor that they 
live partially on charity. The majority work in the city, 
but a portion ply their trade in the neighboring country 
towns. 

Closely related to the above are the old iron dealers and 
peddlers. In fact, a rag dealer will often also deal in 
old iron, furniture, clothing, etc. But the old iron dealer 
is a sort of merchant, buying and selling iron and metal 
only. There are several hundred of these. Their earnings 
are higher than those of the rag peddlers. A number 
own their own homes and are quite prosperous. In their 
case the children are generally absorbed into other oc- 
cupations. 

The iron yard owners are a prosperous class. Some 
are reputed to be worth over $200,000. They do an exten- 
sive business. They are generally former iron or junk 
dealers. 

Dealers in old bottles buy their goods from the rag ped- 
dlers. Their business has been developed only in the past 
few years. There are but 15 or 20 in the city and they are 
doing well, several being worth as much at $20,000, I am 
told. 

Second-hand furniture store-keepers buy their goods, too, 
mostly at the rag peddlers. There are about 20 or 30 and 
they are making a fair living. 

Of the fruit and market peddlers there are about 1,000. 
As they have not much to do in the winter, many go into 
the delivery business. In season they can earn from $20 
to $35 per week. But as they are idle a great part of the 
year their average earnings are very low, and they are 
really poor people. Only a few are comparatively well-to- 
do, and own their homes. Some develop into grocery store 
keepers. Very few of the children of these peddlers fol- 
low the occupation of their fathers. 

The dry goods peddlers seem to have lost ground during 
the last few years, but there are still several hundred. I 



CHICAGO 145 

presume the department stores and mail order houses af- 
fect their business. Their business is done mostly among 
the foreign population of the city. Some, however, do 
peddling in the country, but keep their families in the 
city. With few exceptions, these are quite poor, barely 
making a living. Yet from this class are developed the 
dry goods merchants, wholesale and retail, who establish 
themselves in the city and through the country towns. 
Some of the wholesale merchants have grown to be wealthy. 
In a few instances they are worth several hundred thou- 
sand dollars. One house, I am informed, did a business of 
$8,000,000 last year, employing over a thousand persons. 
Most of those who have established places in small towns 
are doing well, and some have broadened their business 
into department stores. 

From a thousand to fifteen hundred families are sup- 
ported from dry goods, notions, and gentlemen's furnish- 
ing goods stores. The children receive a good education, 
and often enter offices as clerks, book-keepers, and the like. 

Only about 20 are in the furniture business. Some 
two or three have grown well-to-do, the wealthiest being 
worth about $25,000. 

Some of the clothing store-keepers in the First Ward in 
the centre of the business district are doing an extensive 
business. One is worth, perhaps, $50,000. Not more than 
about 30 keep clothing stores proper, as distinct from sec- 
ond-hand stores or pawn shops, selling clothing. 

There are some 20 or 30 shoe store-keepers. None are 
wealthy. A few are worth from $2,000 to $3,000 and 
the rest are doing fairly well. 

There are a large number of store-keepers of various 
kinds throughout the city, selling crockery, ten cent goods, 
hats, etc. 

About 100 Russian Jews are in the saloon business and 
are making a good living. 

To me several points have established themselves quite 
clearly in this inquiry. In factories labor is divided so 
minutely that the work is very monotonous. As a con- 
sequence the Russian Jewish people, who as a rule are 
intelligent, will not continue to labor in factories and work- 
shops, but will go into business, distributive occupations, or 
professions. If, therefore, a condition arose under which 
there would be no further immigration I believe that within 
the next twenty-five or thirty years but a small number of 



146 ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITION 

the Russian Jewish people would be found as wage workers 
in factories. But since immigration every year brings a 
large number into this country, the very poor are by force 
of circumstances compelled to begin as wage workers. The 
transition from this position to that of the merchant and 
the professional man will, therefore, be continuous, at least 
for some time to come. 

It should be added that at the present time Russian Jews 
are covering the country as small merchants and are de- 
veloping into business men for the sale of clothing, dry 
goods, furniture, and the like. 

In my judgment, the establishment of industrial schools 
to which Jewish people could readily go would be very 
helpful in diversifying their occupations. With their wit 
and ability the Russian Jews ought to be able to develop 
in scientific and mechanical pursuits. In the process of 
civilization they would become much more important fac- 
tors if they proceeded to qualify themselves along such 
lines. I find, however, that among graduates of our scien- 
tific and mechanical schools, through lack of the proper in- 
fluence, it is often difficult to get a good footing, and this 
tends to abate the desire to prepare for such pursuits. 



V 
EELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 



(A) NEW YORK 
By Louis Lipsky 

Managing Editor American Hebrew, Neio York City 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 
By Rabbi Julius H. Gkeenstone 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Mks. Benjamin Davis 



147 



EELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

(A) NEW YORK 

The subject of this inquiry is rather difficult, owing to 
the complexity of its elements and the diversity of defini- 
tions given to religion. 

There are two conceptions of religion involved in this 
subject, interwoven with the intensely interesting psychol- 
ogy of the Jew. They are found side by side in the same 
household and, consciously or unconsciously, are strug- 
gling for supremacy. The one has pressed itself into the 
very life of the older generation, and the other is as yet 
an inchoate view — which has had no vital and permanent 
influence on the lives of those who hold it. 

That of the older generation amounts to this: Judaism 
is a religion with its centre in the synagogue and ramifica- 
tions in every department of life — in business, in the 
home, in society. Affiliation with the synagogue is essen- 
tial to a member of the Jewish religion. The Jew who 
attains the proper age at once enters upon the responsibili- 
ties of his Jewish citizenship, and ipso facto becomes a 
member of a religion which requires obedience to law. Tra- 
ditions are not only a heritage — the subject of scholarly 
research — but an ever present and active influence on 
every day life. Religion is the greatest part of life and 
the synagogue the register in which every family enters 
its name. 

Had only this conception of religion existed with us in 
New York, there would have been no difficulty in ascer- 
taining the numerical strength of those affiliated with re- 
ligion by means of a census of the Jewish community. But 
with the Jews, and especially with that Jewish community 
to which reference has been made, there never has been 
self -consciousness enough to produce a desire to make a 
numerical estimate of its strength, except when required 
by the law of the land. 

148 



NEW YORK 149 

Now, the East Side is the battle ground where this old 
representation of religion, accepted by the old generation, 
meets in conflict with a new conception, as yet unorgan- 
ized, feeble and vague, which is held by the new gen- 
eration. 

Conflict is to be expected in every progressive com- 
munity. The conflict in the Jewish community of the 
great metropolis is abnormally intensified by the various 
democratic influences which radiate from the community at 
large and which effectively bring about the assimilation 
of the more adaptable individuals. 

What is the attitude of the old generation to the forces 
that are sweeping away their offspring from the ancient 
strongholds? Seldom is it on their part more than mere 
lamentation. They acquiesce in the inevitable and only be- 
rate the modern spirit w^hich is radically undermining their 
influence. 

The older generation of Russian Jews show a lack of or- 
ganizing power and not even the new influences of a demo- 
cratic city have resulted in giving them that power. With 
them, the new generation is incorrigible and they accept 
this fact with the fatalistic resignation of the oriental. 
They do not understand the new world. 

The position of the newcomer to New York city is impos- 
sible of conception by the ordinary observer. The stand- 
ard of monarchy must give way to that of democracy; 
authority is displaced by sectional anarchy. Communal 
pride of a petty sort impresses the foreign Jew with the 
necessity of joining a synagogue, but he finds very soon 
that the necessity is not so forceful as he had at first sup- 
posed. 

The effect of this change in standards is to be seen in 
the medley of congregations which may be found in the 
city of New York, each with its limited territory and its 
ignorance of the others. Instead of one compact Jewish 
community with an organized centre we see group after 
group forming on the basis of democracy, with a steady 
defiance of all ecclesiastical authority beyond its own boun- 
daries. 

In the recent history of the Jewish community down- 
town this group-anarchy may be noted by a few illustra- 
tions. The Suwalker Chevra does not recognize the au- 
thority of the Rev. So-and-So. The Roumanians settled 
themselves in the upper part of down-town and are clearly 



150 RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

a distinct clan. The immigrants from Suwalk, Minsk, 
Odessa, etc., have their own congregations. 

Formerly the rabbi of a congregation enjoyed his prerog- 
atives with a feeling of power and a knowledge that obe- 
dience to law as interpreted by him was the one evidence 
of the true Jewish heart. In the loose community of New 
York the same rabbi found rival authorities, and — more 
important than all — a positive dislike of rabbinical au- 
thority not the free choice of the layman. America means 
to orthodoxy the breaking up of old communities, and the 
consequent attempt to establish a community with elements 
representing various local traditions and habits. 

It will be of interest to note that practically all the con- 
gregations have adopted the ceremonies of the old S3ma- 
gogue, with very slight modifications — each with its own 
idiosyncracies. The ritual is practically the same, except 
in a sermon now and then, on a special occasion. The ser- 
mon, or derasha, is usually given before the afternoon serv- 
ices. The preachers, or maggidim, are seldom perma- 
nently connected with any one synagogue ; they travel from 
one congregation to another and receive their compensa- 
tion by collections from the faithful the day following the 
sermon. Few of these synagogues have religious schools 
connected with them, and even the chedarim (schools), 
which were often in the old country part of the synagogue, 
are here, with a few exceptions, usually entirely severed. 
The organization of modern children's schools is opposed 
by virtually all the modern orthodox synagogues. The op- 
position is based on the fear that is felt for all innovations. 

The down-town synagogues are really institutional 
churches. An enumeration of the activities connected with 
the Forsyth Street synagogue will show this. It has a 
chevra kadisha, consisting of over twenty members, who 
perform all the rites connected with the burial of the mem- 
bers of the congregation: the chevra is social, for it gives 
banquets very often; on certain Sabbaths, its members 
are accorded privileges at the reading of the law. The 
same synagogue has organized a chevra schas or mish- 
nayoth. This society has forty or fifty members, and 
there are no dues; the members study the Talmud every 
evening in the vestry rooms of the synagogue. The La- 
dies' Benevolent Society consists of ^ over one hundred and 
fifty members ; the dues are paid monthly, and are devoted 
to charity. The congregation is interested in distributing 



NEW YOBK 151 

matzoth during Passover. On specified Sabbaths prom- 
ises of gifts are made for the Beth Israel Hospital, the 
Machsike Talmud Torah of the East Side, and other good 
works that may be brought to the attention of the congre- 
gation. The synagogue supports a rabbi, a cantor or 
ehazan, and a choir, and its doors are open for worship 
morning and evening of every day. Its rabbi has no di- 
rect supervision over the slaughterers of meat ; this matter 
is in the hands of other communal functionaries. The 
membership of the congregation is 150 and its annual in- 
come is seven thousand dollars. 

Though the synagogue is not directly interested in the 
chedarim, the old generation shows its influence in the 
numerous chedarim with which the East Side is dotted — ■ 
all conducted strictly on old country methods. Children of 
a Yery tender age are admitted to these schools and some 
ambitious parents send their offspring to a cheder even 
before it has attended a public school. The methods of 
instruction are as antiquated as one could imagine. The 
first years are devoted to teaching the art of reading, then 
translations and finally the study of the Talmud. The 
drill is continuous and wearing. Specimens of children 
who attend these chedarim are not at all creditable as mod- 
els of physical development. The cheder-bred youth has 
his ear-marks, of which he is unable to rid himself even 
when fully grown. The schoolrooms are insanitary and 
often a menace to health, but from the opposition of the 
patrons of these schools, one vfould gather that just these 
features — the incessant drill, the long hours, the lack 
of ventilation, the crowdedness, are essential. It has been 
estimated that these schools on the East Side are equal to 
the number of congregations; but figures cannot tell us 
anything of value in this respect, because the number of 
retired rabbis, chazanim (cantors) and sehochtim (official 
slaughterers), who earn a pittance by instructing children, 
cannot be counted; they are hidden away in the recesses 
of many a tenement. 

The older generation shows its influence also in the 
Gemilath Chasodim Society, which is an altogether admir- 
able society for the loaning of money to poor borrowers; 
but this society, it must be confessed, would have been 
of very little influence were it not for the substantial 
assistance it received and still receives from gentlemen con- 
nected with the up-town organizations. 



152 liELlGlOUS ACTIVITY 

What is the attitude of this older generation to reform? 

It is clearly and unmistakably orthodox, and has not 
been as yet touched in the least by the reform wave which 
has swept over the German communities. If anything, the 
German reform movement appeals to very few — even 
of the more advanced class in the down-town population. 
The repulse of the Russian community by the German con- 
gregations, though not meant, has resulted in a feeling of 
distrust and dislike on the part of those who live down- 
town. As a result, anything that may be attributed to 
German reform is at once discountenanced by those who 
are in charge of down-town affairs, or who may contem- 
plate certain innovations. The old cling tenaciously to 
all the customs possible of realization and form a com- 
pact and immovable opposition to progress. 

Yet the orthodox elements represent all the organized 
forces of religion down-town, with the exception of one 
or two societies which we shall mention hereafter. 

It would be a narrow mind, however, that would look 
only to the organized expression of religion for a com- 
plete inventory of the religious life of any community. 
Generally in every active community there is an under- 
tow of radicalism which in its essence is religious and 
which because of the unpalatable form which religion 
takes with the orthodox, finds it impossible to affiliate. 

The organized religious community is generally one-third 
dead. That proportion of its adherents are successfully 
ossified. Another third is composed of sluggish minds, 
or those whom habit conquers, who cannot conceive of 
anything new. The other one-third is composed of the 
hangers-on, who are neither here nor there — too weak to 
organize on their own platform and too timid to tear away 
entirely from the old. 

A large majority of the younger people of the East Side 
are fully impregnated with genuine religious feeling. They 
are opposed to religion because they think that the re- 
ligion they oppose stands for the essence of all religion. 
They are under the delusion at the present time that 
the form of the religion is its spirit. 

It is no exaggeration to say that one-half of the ma- 
turing generation of the East Side is religious, and is 
gradually finding itself, and it is not too much to hope that 
it will soon give expression to its feelings on the subject 



NEW YORK 153 

in some organized way. This does not mean, however, that 
the spirit is specifically Jewish. 

Already there are two organizations on the East Side 
which represent the influence of the younger generation. 
One organization is known as the Jewish Endeavor Society, 
which is practically a self-supporting movement of young 
men and women, directed by theological students. The aim 
is a revival of interest in the orthodox Jewish religion. 
The society has established Saturday afternoon services 
and has placed on a respectable basis a number of classes 
for the study of Jewish religion, Jewish literature and 
Jewish ethical subjects. With one or two exceptions, all 
the classes meet down-town, and are led by theological 
students. Much has been expected of this society and 
interested persons are of the opinion that it would serve 
as an entering wedge for more religious organizations. 

In the opinion of the writer, the Jewish Endeavor So- 
ciety cannot be in any way effective as a focus for the lat- 
ent religious feeling on the East Side; at the best, it 
can only hope to gather about it a very small portion of 
the yoimg people of the district. 

It is a great error to think that all the young people 
of the East Side have kept aloof of religion because the 
ceremonies have proved distasteful or discordant. Such a 
petty reason cannot be charged against them. Their oppo- 
sition to the Jewish religion is not based on mere externals. 
There are many among them who have been affected by the 
progress of science and the spread of philosophical ideas 
and have given serious consideration to the fundamentals 
of religion. These enlightened minds, while not as yet 
fully confirmed in a theory of religion, are still so pos- 
itive as to what they do not believe that they cannot be 
influenced by a revival of purified orthodox service. 

Any form of religious service intended to be perma- 
nent, or as a focus for the younger people of the East 
Side, must combine not only a reverence for purified 
ancient ceremonies and religion, but a clear conception 
of the newer definition of religion which is taking hold of 
modern men and women. 

Another organization which does not lend itself so well 
to the classification of a religious organization is the down- 
town Society for Ethical Culture; however, the serious- 
ness of the movement permits of its classification under 



154 • BELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

this head'. The latest utterances of Dr. Felix Adler on the 
subject of sjTiibols, ceremonies, and religion, allow for the 
prophecy that this society will have much to do in a positive 
religious line of work in the near future. 

The down-town section of the Ethical Culture Society 
is in the hands of the East Side young men and young 
women. It does its work in an educational way and has 
under its charge a number of classes in the kindergarten. 
Its weekly meetings have not been successful. The in- 
fluence of this organization has been somewhat checked 
by the method of its formation. The purpose was to 
unite the young people of the district on a common eth- 
ical creed, but the fact that the society accepted a sub- 
sidy to do its work when it should have raised the required 
money from its own membership gives countenance to the 
prejudice that has arisen in some minds against the or- 
ganization. The Ethical Society should not rest entirely 
on the saintliness of its leaders and should demand of those 
who affiliate with it a contribution to the cause equal to the 
benefit they receive. 

It is unnecessary to mention the benevolent organiza- 
tions and charitable societies organized outside of the syna- 
gogue, whose members are actuated by true religious feel- 
ing. 

It seems that the Jewish religion has had its effects on 
the Jewish people in a way which gives one great hope for 
their future. Everywhere they have settled, whether affil- 
iated with a synagogue or not, their efforts have been di- 
rected to good work in getting into right relations with 
one's neighbors, which is the essence of religion. 

Ranging on the fringes of the community, and in some 
cases in the very heart of it, is that confused and defiant 
army of radicals, w^hose fulminations against religion by 
their very exaggeration lose their force. The student of 
the East Side must not neglect this army; it is both a 
menace and a benefit. It is a menace in its persistence 
and the passion and rancor which it displays against 
all forms of religion — all forms of enthusiasm, and every 
phase of idealism, which the community may express. It 
is a menace because the violent socialists and the enthu- 
siastic anarchists seem to include in their condemnation 
of religion the ethical side of religion. But even this army 
has its good in its stinging of .the self-complacent ortho- 



NEW YORK 155 

dox to defend themselves.^ These forces in their very na- 
tures are doomed to be ineffective, for they stand for dis- 
organization and anarchy. They represent in the Jewish 
community what Robert Ingersoll represented in the Chris- 
tian community: that is, opposition. 

The radicals have of late come under the influence of 
the Jewish national idea, and as a result they are less 
bitter against the religious element than before. In their 
newspapers they have abandoned the advocacy of inter- 
nationalism, and have declared themselves Jews, but in a 
national sense. No amount of rationalizing will check 
the growth of the feeling that their interests are closely 
allied to those of the Jewish people, and as a result we 
may see a more friendly spirit toward religion and a more 
liberal openness to essential religious influence than here- 
tofore. 

The elements I have described form a complete inventory 
of the religious activity of the East Side, in so far as 
such an inventory can be made.^ 

The problem before those who would influence the growth 
of religion on the East Side is not easy. The East Side 
looms up before the imagination of the American Jew 
as in a difficult situation because he has not been able to 
grapple with the situation. When he contemplates the 
East Side, he interprets its life to fit his own conceptions 
and views dissimilar conditions without discernment. If 
there is any improvement he believes it must follow the 
line of his own thinking and experience. 

Now, obviously, the work on the East Side cannot be 
conducted without consideration of the elements which may 
be found there. There are orthodox Jews on the East 
Side, there are atheists, there are disciples of Emerson, 
there are followers of Kant and Comte, there are even the- 
osophists and spiritualists in some number. 

^ The Christian missions for children have become very active. They, too, 
are arousing the orthodox Jews of the district to the need of providing some 
religious instruction, based on modern methods, for their children. But the 
absence of precedents, the lack of a common understanding, makes the success 
of any venture decidedly problematic. The so called " up-town " element is 
also interested and may initiate some institutions which will counteract the 
work of the missionaries, (whose work cannot be commended for its good 
influences). The Lucas classes may be mentioned. The Emanu El Brother- 
hood is also working on the same lines. 

- I prefer not to give statistics on this subject. A thorough study of the 
figures is being made by Superintendent David Blaustein of the Educational 
Alliance, but there will, in my judgment, be little illumination in the figures, 
for in such a heterogeneous mass the mere statement of numbers has little 
significance. 



156 * RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

The true educator is he who fits his methods to his pupils, 
and if the aim is the development of religious feeling he 
has no right to impose any phase of religious belief 
on those to be instructed. 

It is not with the children that the religious problem 
concerns itself. The propagandists can effect very little 
in the community by imposing a form of religion. The 
Jewish religion can boast of being creedless. It demands 
simply a true heart, and to walk in the right path. 

The only way that feeling can be instilled as a belief 
in life is by developing it according to the best methods with 
the material that is found among the people, with the 
germs of the religious feeling that are there. 

If there are orthodox young men the philanthropist or 
educator should instill orthodoxy in them. If there are 
Emersonians among the young people (and no one will 
deny that the Emerson influence is religious), it is their 
duty to lead the Emersonian philosophy into an organized 
form. If there are believers in Kant, whose belief is so 
strong within them that they may be stimulated to or- 
ganize for the propagation of their beliefs, the duty of 
the worker is to assist them and ask them no questions as to 
the orthodoxy or reform of their Judaism. If there are 
young people who believe that ethics only are essential, and 
religion secondary, and they are firm in their belief, the 
true worker will use this as a basis of organization among 
these young people — the point being always to utilize the 
germs of religious feeling in the formation of an organi- 
zation — there to allow it to be developed. 

Religion is a great indefinable influence, which no man 
can mark or limit, and it shows itself in innumerable 
aspects. In its essence it is neither Jewish nor Christian. 
It includes all of these, and he who would stimulate religion 
in a community which is so complex as the Jewish com- 
munity of New York must make it his purpose not to fur- 
ther partisan views of religion but to be content if he 
further the growth of that greater religion which holds 
in its hands all minor revelations of itself. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

That Judaism is more a religion of deed than of creed is 
best illustrated in the present time by the life of the Rus- 
sian Jew. Religion with him is co-extensive with life, it 
regulates every detail of his daily existence and is so inter- 
woven with every movement and action of his being that 
he never stops to question its authority. Even those who 
by contact with other civilizations and with other forces 
have changed their opinions about many of the sources and 
reasons of Jewish observances, are reluctant to abolish these 
observances from their daily life, so strong is communal 
opinion and so ingrained have these customs become in the 
very being of the Jew. The communities are organized in 
accordance with these customs, the whole social fabric in 
the Pale of Settlement is dependent upon these habits and 
ceremonies, the dignity and position of the members of the 
community are measured by their adherence to these laws 
and ordinances. So that, whereas we frequently meet with 
Jews in the smallest towns of the Pale who entertain the 
most unorthodox views, there are few, indeed, who would 
dare to indulge in unorthodox observances. The custom 
and habit of many centuries have not only surrounded all 
truly religious observances with halo of inviolable sanctity, 
but have also stamped many other actions — accretions from 
without — that have nothing to do with Judaism, with the 
religious sanction. For example, it took many years of 
heated discussion and disquiet before the Russian Jew be- 
came reconciled to the idea that the wearing of a short 
coat is not in conflict with Judaism, or that sitting bare- 
headed in one's house is not necessarily an indication of 
religious laxity. In fact, there are hundreds of Jewish 
communities even now in Russia, the members of which 
are horrified to see one of their brethren dressed in accord- 
ance with European fashion. It is the reverence for prece- 
dent and tradition which in the minds of the Russian Jew 
led to the inclusion of many such outward details that 
have apparently no bearing on religion. 

157 



158 . RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

What 'a tremendous shock all these views and opinions 
receive when the same Russian Jew enters this land of per- 
sonal liberty and unrestrained individualism. A complete 
stranger to the public, the force of its opinion dwindles into 
insignificance so far as he is concerned. Coming in most 
cases with the intention of improving his economic condi- 
tion, he is soon confronted with the awful problem of 
Sabbath observance. His veneration for the old observ- 
ances having been shaken, his opinions about the sacred- 
ness of the institutions of society, as they exist in the old 
world having been changed when he first viewed the statue 
of liberty and received the explanation of its significance, 
and later when he listened to the first stmnp orator or read 
the first newspaper that came his way, it was easy to sub- 
mit to the custom of the land, which to his mind, became 
identical with breaking away from all that was regarded 
as sacred and inviolable in his native province. The power 
of discrimination and acute analysis is not the common 
property of the multitude. The majority of men are un- 
able to distinguish between the essential and the non-essen- 
tial, and the average Russian Jew is no exception to this 
rule. With one sweep of the hand he changed his notions 
about religion and religious observance, together with his 
ideas about politics and government. Many a young man, 
who was firm in his religious convictions, while in his native 
village, who having heard of the religious laxity prevalent 
in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled 
by the temptation and allurements of the free country, suc- 
cumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when 
first submitting his chin to the barber's razor,^ at the en- 
treaties and persuasions of his Americanized friends and 
relatives. Religion then appeared to him not only distinct 
from life but antagonistic to it, and since it was life, a free, 
full, undisturbed life that he sought in coming here, he felt 
compelled — and gradually habit and example made the 
compulsion agreeable — to divorce himself from all the re- 
ligious ties that had hitherto encompassed him. Thus it is 
that the immigrant Jewish youth, not only those who had 
embraced other teachings and theories before their arrival 
in America, not only those who had cast their lot with the 
Russian martyrs for liberty in their native land, but even 
the simple, unsophisticated young men or women who had 

1 Shaving is prohibited according to ancient Jewish law. Leviticus, xix, 27; 
xxi, 5. Comp. Talmud, Makkoth, 20a et seq. 



PHILADELPHIA 159 

been faithful and loyal to tlie institutions of old and who 
desired to conduct their lives in accordance with the pre- 
cepts of their religion, became estranged from Judaism and 
suffered themselves to be carried along by the tide, with- 
out offering any struggle for the maintenance of their cher- 
ished ideals. The old had become impracticable, had inter- 
fered with their pursuits and desires, and they were not 
strong enough, morally or intellectually, to select the good 
and the essential, and harmonize them with the new life 
into which they had been forced. Thus it is that the immi- 
grant Jew in America has frequently become callous and 
indifferent, and sometimes cynical and antagonistic, to 
everything pertaining to Judaism. 

Although the great bulk of early Jewish immigrants to 
America consisted of young people, it was not very long 
before their elders, their fathers and mothers, were invited 
to settle here. After one member of the family had ac- 
cumulated some wealth, and established himself in business, 
he was anxious that the other members should be provided 
for, and when two or three brothers and sisters had settled 
here, it was natural that they should desire to have their 
parents with them. It is comparatively easy for a young 
man, especially one who is confronted with the disagreeable 
duty of serving for four years in the army without any 
prospect of advancement, to renounce all ties and leave the 
place of his birth, but it becomes an entirely different mat- 
ter when older people, who have spent most of their lives 
in one place, are asked to sever all connections and begin 
life over again under new conditions. There are also the 
troubles of the journey, the passage of the boundary line, 
the great sea voyage, all of which appear insurmountable 
to the old, inexperienced villager of the Pale. Still, the 
love for their children, and the desire to be with them, in 
most cases enabled the parents to overcome all these difficul- 
ties and fears, and they safely arrived in the '' free coun- 
try," were lovingly received by their children and estab- 
lished in the new home provided for them. The old mother 
immediately assumes the duties of the household, and her 
husband, after a few days of sight-seeing, is either initiated 
into some easy labor, or is left alone to spend his time as he 
sees fit, his support being provided for by his children. 
Glad as they are of the fine appearance of their children, 
of their modern ways and their business successes, 
they cannot suppress a sigh at beholding their shaved chins, 



160 . RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

or at seefng them eat their breakfast without having put 
on their phylacteries, prayed, washed their hands and pro- 
nounced the blessings before and after the meals — customs 
which they held sacred and inviolable. Their religious sen- 
timents are constantly outraged by the actions of their 
children, and their cup of sadness and disappointment is 
filled to overflowing, when, on the first Sabbath they behold 
their children depart for their daily occupations. Who can 
measure the misery and wretchedness of the parents, 
strangers in a strange land, at seeing that which they re- 
garded as dearer than life violated, voluiijtarily, by their 
own children? Many a father spent his first Sabbath in 
America in weeping and lamentation, many a mother turned 
hers into a day of mourning, a real Tisha B'ab (the ninth 
day of the month of Ab, the anniversary of the destruction 
of Jerusalem; the Jewish memorial day of mourning). 
They could not command as they would have done in their 
old home, for they are dependent upon their children. 
They cannot argue, for their arguments are met either with 
ridicule or with explanations of inexorable, unanswerable 
problems of economy which they do not understand. They 
can only silently weep at their misfortune and regret the 
day that they set foot in this ' ' tref a medinah, ' ' this unclean 
land. In course of time, however, they become reconciled 
to conditions and though they themselves still adhere to the 
old customs and institutions of their religion, they regard 
as natural that the younger generation should disregard 
religious precepts and ceremonies. Some have engaged in 
business themselves and learned by experience the many 
temptations and allurements which constantly beset the 
way of the young and to which even some of the older peo- 
ple succumb. The old Jewess may still curse Columbus for 
his great transgression in discovering America, where her 
children have lost their religion, the old father may still 
relieve his burdened heart on the high holy days by reciting 
the confession of sins, but in the course of the year, they are 
either too much engrossed in other affairs or they become 
too much accustomed to religious violations to utter words 
of censure or regret. Thus the young go their way unmo- 
lested by the importunities of their parents. The old go 
theirs also. They organize synagogues and try to introduce 
here all the provincialisms and crudities to which they were 
accustomed in the small villages of Russia or Galicia whence 
they came. At home, some of the young men or women. 



PHILADELPHIA 161 

whose regard for their parents' sensibilities is greater than 
for their own convenience, perfunctorily observe the minu- 
tiffi of religion, whilst others disregard them even when in 
the presence of their elders. Among the enthusiastic Rus- 
sian Jewish youth there may also be found some, who, en- 
snared in' the meshes of nihilism or socialism, as they under- 
stand the terms, consider it their duty to make converts to 
their new faith, and begin their missionary labors at home, 
thus embittering the lives of their parents by senseless and 
vexatious disputes. But these are in the minority; most 
of the young people are entirely indifferent and callous to 
their religion; they follow the smallest details of religious 
observance in the presence of their parents out of respect 
for them and disregard the most elemental institutions of 
i'udaism when away from their homes. In neither case 
does there exist a genuine sympathy between the young and 
the old. The religious activities of the early Russian Jew- 
ish settlers were therefore entirely one-sided, made to har- 
monize with the needs and the habits of the older people. 
The generous, young, Americanized Jews permitted their 
parents to introduce the old ways into the new land. Even 
when they contributed toward the support of the syna- 
gogue, they did so not out of the sense of supporting an 
institution that was needed, but to indulge the old people 
in their whims and follies. They did not attempt to gain 
control of these institutions, for they did not want them. 
The institutions have therefore become counterparts of sim- 
ilar ones in the small villages of Russia, wanting, however, 
the features which make the latter influences for good in the 
community. The congregations are sometimes character- 
ized by a spirit of conmiercialism, not at all in harmony 
with the cause they represent and lacking the essential char- 
acteristics of a congregation by failing to unite the various 
elements into one body or to inspire them with broad relig- 
ious feeling. 

When Russian Jews first came in large numbers to Phila- 
delphia most of the Jewish congregations in the city had 
already introduced reforms in their services. Religious 
scruples, social differences, and a spirit of clannishness that 
is natural to foreigners caused the Russian Jews to form 
synagogues of their own. The only orthodox synagogue 
where the services were conducted in strict accordance with 
tradition was the Portuguese Synagogue Mickve Israel, but 
Xhere the social distinction was still greater and the differ- 



162 EELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

ence in the pronunciation of the Hebrew and in the ritual 
made the service almost unintelligible to the Russian Jewish 
immigrant. The German Jewish population had at that 
time moved to the upper sections of the city, whereas the 
Russian immigrants settled mainly in the district south 
of Spruce Street, so that distance combined with other causes 
to force the newly arrived immigrants to organize congre- 
gations of their own in the districts where they lived. Al- 
ready before the general exodus from Russia in the early 
eighties there was a small Jewish community in Port Rich- 
mond, in the northeastern section of the city, which main- 
tained its own synagogue. But, as it appears, the later 
arrivals preferred to remain in the southern section, and 
in the course of but a few years a flourishing Jewish com- 
munity with synagogues and other religious institutions was 
established in the district bounded by Spruce Street on the 
north, "Washington Avenue on the south. Broad Street on 
the west, and the Delaware River on the east. The two 
largest synagogues belonging to the congregations B'nai 
Abraham Anshe Russia (organized in 1882) and Kesher 
Israel (formerly B'nai Jacob, organized in 1883), are situ- 
ated on Lombard Street, the first on the north side above 
Fifth, the second on the south side above Fourth Street. 
These, however, were not the first congregations organized 
by the Russian Jewish immigrants, nor were they the only 
ones. In many cases the founding of a congregation pro- 
ceeded along the following lines : A few individuals, usual- 
ly such as came from the same town or district, feeling the 
necessity of some concerted action, banded themselves to- 
gether to form a beneficial society ordinarily bearing the 
name of the town or district whence most of the members 
came. The aim of such societies, in the first instance, was 
to assist financially any of the members who might be sick, 
to provide burial for the dead, and a death benefit for the 
widow or orphan of a deceased member. After the society 
became strengthened in numbers, a hall was hired for meet- 
ing purposes and was converted into a praying room. With 
the approach of the high holy days, a season when every 
Jew feels the need of a synagogue, a reader was engaged 
and seats sold to members or non-members. This brought a 
considerable revenue to the society and after a few years, 
in many cases, the organizations saved enough money to 
begin negotiations for a synagogue building. Jews evinced 
no scruples in regard to turning a church into a Jewish 



PHILADELPHIA 163 

synagogue, and since the neighborhood was becoming more 
and more Jewish, the Christians gradually moving to other 
parts of the city, a church building was easily obtainable. 
In fact, most of the Jewish synagogues in Philadelphia 
were formerly Christian churches. The building was 
bought and altered for purposes of Jewish worship and the 
society imperceptibly turned into a congregation, retaining, 
however, for a long period, its beneficial elements. In this 
manner most of the Russian Jewish synagogues were 
formed. The distinction between a chevra and a congrega- 
tion consists in the fact that the former has no special build- 
ing for religious worship, whereas the latter has. We 
frequently meet with two or more chevras worshiping in 
the same building on various floors, either because they 
are unwilling to unite and buy a building of their own or 
because, as is often the case, even when united they are un- 
able to procure sufficient funds for a building. As might 
be expected, these chevras conduct their services in many 
cases in an undignified manner, the officers being interested 
in the money they expect to realize from the service rather 
than in the religious and moral improvement of the wor- 
shipers. 

The position of the rabbi in the Russian Jewish commun- 
ity is peculiar. In Russia the rabbi is, as a rule, not con- 
nected with any particular congregation but is regarded as 
the ecclesiastical head of all the Jews. In larger commun- 
ities he is given one or more assistants (dayyanim — • 
judges) who help him in the administration of justice, 
which is still one of the functions of the Russian rabbi, or in 
the decision of ritual cases. Some congregations may select 
for themselves preachers (maggidim) who interpret legal 
or homiletie works to large gatherings, every day at dusk, 
between the afternoon and evening services, and deliver 
religious discourses on Saturday afternoons. The rabbi, 
however, is looked upon as the chief of the community. He 
rarely preaches, he sometimes visits the constituent syna- 
gogues, and on the Sabbath preceding Passover and on the 
penitential Sabbath (between New Year and the Day of 
Atonement) delivers learned discourses at the largest syna- 
gogue in town, to which all are invited. The majority of 
the people rarely come in contact with the rabbi ; his great- 
ness is measured not by his work among them, but by his 
knowledge of Jewish lore and by his assiduity in study ; his 
position is of the highest dignity and honor. 



164 • RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

It is ^tirely different with the rabbi in this country. On 
account of the diverse elements of nationality and religious 
proclivities, no one rabbi is satisfactory to all the members 
of the community. Where the institution of chief rabbi 
was tried it invariably failed for this reason. The individ- 
ual congregations were either unable or unwilling to engage 
the services of a rabbi and many of them even dispensed 
with a hired reader, since almost every Jew is able and 
anxious to read the services. The lay officers conduct all 
the affairs of the congregation, the spiritual needs of the 
older people are attended to by themselves or by one of 
their number more learned than the rest, reading and inter- 
preting portions of the rabbinic literature in the room ad- 
joining the synagogue. The children are taught Hebrew 
and religion at their homes or at the established religious 
schools. The young people of older growth do not visit 
the synagogue and do not care for religious instruction, so 
that the services of a rabbi are regarded by them as super- 
fluous. Still, with the increase of the population and the 
more perfect organization of the community, the need of 
a communal leader became obvious and some congregations 
have elected a rabbi. To import a rabbi from Russia and as- 
sure him a respectable livelihood was beyond the ability of 
any single body, and the union of a few congregations in the 
election of a rabbi, although attempted in a few instances, 
could not succeed because of the divers elements and differ- 
ent tendencies of each congregation. So that those con- 
gregations which desired a rabbi had to satisfy themselves 
with the material at hand and select from their midst a 
learned man, authorized to decide religious questions, and 
to undertake the control of their spiritual affairs. The 
salary offered is usually very small, but many perquisites 
fall to the share of the rablji. These consist of wedding 
fees, fees for the supervision of the ritual slaughter of ani- 
mals, fees for the supervision of the ritual preparation of 
various articles of food for the Passover, and of occasional 
presents by wealthy members. In return the rabbi is ex- 
pected to preach occasionally in the s3Tiagogue and to an- 
swer questions of law and of ritual. It will be noticed from 
his various duties and privileges here enumerated that the 
relation between rabbi and congregation is not close, not 
one of thorough sympathy and mutual \mderstanding. The 
rabbi is still the rabbi of the community, not of an organ- 
ized community, but one of individuals. Congregations 



PHILADELPHIA 165 

frequently permit their rabbi to be elected by other con- 
gregations also, without there being any union of interests, 
and, on the other hand, many so-called rabbis arise who are 
not connected with any congregation, but, being supported 
by a few individuals, exercise the functions in a certain 
district. There are always, however, two or three, who by 
virtue of their activity and tact, succeed in making them- 
selves nominally at least the heads of the community, and 
in causing the people to respect their opinions on communal 
questions. In Philadelphia, Rev. B. L. Levinthal, the rabbi 
of the B'nai Abraham Congregation since 1891, and subse- 
quently elected by a few other congregations, is recognized 
as the chief of the Russian rabbinate, vv^iile Rev. A. H. 
Ershler, of the Ahavas Achim Anshe Shavil Congregation, 
and Rev. Nathan Brenner, of the B'nai Israel Congrega- 
tion of Port Richmond, are also recognized authorities in 
Jewish law and identified with a number of communal move- 
ments. Besides these, there are a number of other rabbis, 
some connected with congregations, others deriving a liveli- 
hood from occasional fees — frequently given in an unbe- 
coming manner. The evil of this system, however, is being 
recognized by the Russian Jews as well as by their rabbis, 
and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, a national organization 
established a few years ago, has made many attempts to 
regulate the rabbinate, but so far with very little success. 
There are three classes of educational institutions in a 
Jewish community of Russia, the cheder, the Talmud Torah, 
and the yeshibah. The first is usually a private venture 
conducted by an individual who receives a stipulated sum 
per semester for every child he instructs. The instruction 
continues for the whole day and the subjects included in 
the curriculum extend over the entire range of elementary 
Jewish education, from the Hebrew alphabet to the study 
of the Talmud and its commentaries. Religion per se, or 
Jewish history is rarely taught in the cheder, the pupil 
being expected to derive his knowledge of these subjects 
from his study of the Bible and the Talmud. The Talmud 
Torah is a public institution maintained by the commu- 
nity for giving instruction free of charge to the children 
of the poor. It is like the cheder except that it is less 
modern in its methods. The yeshibah is a higher institu- 
tion of learning where the Talmud and subsequent rabbinic 
literature only are studied, under the guidance of a rosh 
yeshibah (chief of the academy). This is usually a public 



166 • RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

institution and is maintained by contributions from various 
communities and in a few instances from the whole Jewish 
body, and even Jews outside of Russia. In the yeshibah 
the instruction imparted by the teacher is of very little im- 
portance. The greatest stress is laid on individual study 
and research. The Russian government, true to its policy 
of preventing assemblies of young people, no matter what 
the object, looks with suspicion upon these academies, and 
in 1892 closed the doors of the oldest and most famous, the 
Yeshibah of Volosin, the pride of the Russian Jews. 
Still many of greater or lesser reputation, depending en- 
tirely on the erudition of their chiefs, still exist in Russia, 
where the growing j^outh devote their years to the mastery 
of the intricate literature of the rabbis. There is one 
characteristic feature in all Jewish educational institutions 
in Russia, — they are consciously or unconsciously kept 
distinct from the synagogues. 

The American public school system, under which every 
child is expected to spend the greater part of the day in 
secular studies, prevented the earlier settlers from introduc- 
ing the educational methods to which they were accustomed. 
The problem was partly solved for them by the Hebrew 
Sunday schools which had been in existence in Philadelphia 
many years before the Russian Jewish exodus. The Hebrew 
Sunday School Society and the Hebrew Education Society 
immediately took steps toward meeting the increasing de- 
mands of the growing community and established schools 
in the sections where the settlement was most dense. But 
these schools, though largely patronized by children of 
Russian Jews, were not considered sufficient by their par- 
ents, either because Hebrew was not regarded as of prime 
importance in the curriculum, or because the modern 
methods employed in these schools were looked upon by 
them with suspicion. Hence the cheder was introduced 
here, of course in a greatly modified form. The most com- 
mon custom is to have the teacher come to the pupil 's house 
after school hours every day and instruct him in the rudi- 
ments of Hebrew, especially that which is used in public 
worship. These teachers receive a very moderate compensa- 
tion. They are frequently altogether unacquainted with 
pedagogic principles. The more advanced teachers, after 
some struggle and privation, succeeded in obtaining a 
patronage large enough to warrant their opening a school 
for the afternoon hours, where Hebrew is the chief and 



PHILADELPHIA 167 

frequently tlie only subject of instruction. That these pri- 
vate religious schools are productive of so little good is due 
to various causes of which but a few will be mentioned here. 
The teacher or rabbi, if he is experienced in teaching, which 
is not always the case, is usually of foreign birth and train- 
ing and has very little sympathy with the wants and desires 
of the American child and no understanding of his tricks 
and subtleties. The language used in instruction is in most 
cases Yiddish, a language that is foreign to the pupil even 
though he use it in conversation at home. The rewards 
and punishments in use in these schools are obnoxious to 
a child acquainted with the more refined methods of the 
public schools. The system with which these teachers are 
acquainted is the old system of the cheder under which the 
child was expected to devote the whole day to Jewish sub- 
jects, and it is very difficult for them to adapt themselves 
to new conditions. If there is lack of sympathy and un- 
derstanding between the immigrant father and the Ameri- 
can trained child, there is open hostility between the rabbi 
of the cheder and his pupils. These and other causes 
militate against the cheder. 

The need of providing instruction for the children of the 
poor was made obvious to the leaders among the Russian 
Jews, and a free school (Talmud Torah) was established in 
1890, where religious instruction is given free of charge or 
for a small fee, to the children of the poor. In course of 
time, when the Jews began to move up-town, another school 
was established there, and recently a third has been organ- 
ized in the far southern section. These schools are attended 
altogether by about 1,000 children and are supported by a 
regular membership and by voluntary contributions. Ses- 
sions are held every day of the week, including Saturdays 
and Sundays, and the method of instruction differs very 
little from that pursued in the cheder. During the past 
year, in accordance with a resolution passed by the Union 
of Orthodox Rabbis, a Hebrew high school (later, Yeshibah 
Mishkan Israel) was organized by Rabbi Levinthal, where 
instruction in Talmud and in the higher branches of Jewish 
lore are imparted to boys of advanced age, with the view 
to preparing them for the rabbinate. Judgment must be 
reserved on this new venture until a later time. Some con- 
gregations have attempted to organize schools in connection 
with their synagogues, and in a few instances this has 
proved highly successful. It should be added that in al- 



168 • RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

most all these institutions only boys are admitted, the girls 
being left entirely without any religious instruction or re- 
ceiving it at home or in the Hebrew Sunday School Society 's 
classes. 

A few attempts have been made to organize the young 
people for religious purposes, but these have invariably 
failed. The numerous societies of young people in the 
southern section of the city make little or no provision for 
religious education, their endeavors being mainly along 
social and literary lines. The Hebrev/ Literature Society 
is the oldest and strongest of the kind down-town. Its 
former radical tendency is gradually disappearing and lec- 
tures on strictly Jewish subjects are listened to with atten- 
tion in its halls; but it has not yet taken a positive stand 
in religious matters. The Young Men's Hebrew Union's 
activities are social and broadly educational. There are 
other societies composed of young people which make no 
pretence, even in name, to any religious activity. The 
Zionist societies, however, though not aiming directly at 
religious improvement, exert a decidedly good influence on 
their constituencies. Lectures on Jewish subjects are the 
rule in these organizations and classes for instruction in 
Jewish history and Hebrew meet with some success among 
them. Since the establishment of the Zion Institute in 
1902, a building especially devoted to Zionistic purposes, 
the activity in these lines has increased. There is a library 
and reading room, where a majority of the books and 
periodicals are in Hebrew. Recently a decorous service 
for the high holy days w^as instituted. The Zionist ideal, 
which presupposes a strong national Jewish consciousness 
among its devotees, cannot but be productive of stronger 
religious sentiments, of a more virile interest in Israel's 
past. 

An attempt was made a few years ago to organize a 
reform s^magogue down-town for those to whom the service 
in the existing synagogues had become distasteful, Friday 
evening services were held in a hall, in accordance with the 
reform mode of worship and an English sermon was deliv- 
ered by one of the up-town reform rabbis. But the attempt 
failed for many reasons, the most prominent being the lack 
of interest on the part of the down-town Jews. After a 
short existence, the congregation was dissolved. Another 
attempt to organize the young people in a religious body 
was made under the name of the Jewish Endeavor Society, 



PHILADELPHIA 169 

modeled after the New York society of the same name. 
With the financial aid of the Council of Jewish Women, 
this society arranged for Saturday afternoon services at one 
of the largest synagogues down-town, with attractive sing- 
ing and an English sermon. The services were conducted 
in strictly orthodox style but were made decorous and at- 
tractive. This also failed and its failure may be ascribed 
to lack of interest in religious matters on the part of the 
young people. As the result of a suggestion made by Eev. 
Dr. Joseph Krauskopf , president of the Central Conference 
of American Rabbis, at its convention in St. Louis during 
the summer of 1904, more active propaganda were made 
in the lower section of the city for the establishment of a 
reform congregation. The Union of American Hebrew 
Congregations sent its representative, Rabbi George Zepin, 
to organize the movement. He succeeded in interesting 
some down-town Jews in the movement and an organization 
was effected under the name of Congregation Israel. 
Down-town orthodox rabbis and laymen viewed the move- 
ment with alarm, and a circular advising parents not to 
permit their children to attend the services was distributed 
broadcast in the down-town districts. During the high holy 
days the attendance was quite large. It remains, however, 
to be seen whether this mxovement will meet with greater 
success than those that preceded it. 

To obtain a glimpse of the future religious status of the 
Russian Jews now living in Philadelphia, it is necessary 
to consider the elements making up that body. It is quite 
evident that from the older immigrants who arrived in this 
country with settled habits and ideas very little can be ex- 
pected. They will continue to live in the same manner as 
they were accustomed to and observe the ceremonies that 
have become part of their lives. Such as have become 
estranged from religion are too few and their influence too 
insignificant to demand particular attention. The hope of 
Judaism in America rests with the young people and es- 
pecially with those of the Russian immigrant class, both 
because of their numbers and increasing influence and of 
their superior intellectual attainments. It is these young 
people that demand our especial consideration if we venture 
a forecast of the future of Judaism in this or any other 
part of the land. 

Broadly speaking, we may divide the young people of 
^own-to\\Ti Jewry into three classes. Such a division is not 



170 • RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

compreliensive, but it will be sufficient to give an insight 
into present conditions and will permit of conjecture as to 
the future. 

First. The young people that hail from the lower classes 
of Russian Jewish society who have never had the advan- 
tages of culture or education of any kind. These, on 
arriving, constitute in America the great army of sweat- 
shop workers and soon become the playthings of every un- 
scrupulous demagogue. Oppressed by their employers, 
who, in most cases, belong to the same social class, they 
rebel, and in their ignorance confuse economic and relig- 
ious problems and misinterpret the new theories of social 
economy presented to them by the labor leaders. They be- 
come not only indifferent to religion but also actuated by a 
hatred toward everything that has a religious flavor. 
Their leaders are mostly disappointed Russian students, 
banished political offenders, or such other persons as have 
become embittered by the state of affairs in Russia and who 
carry their dissatisfaction with the political status in that 
land into the realms of economy and religion. They find 
ready listeners in the group of wretched, overworked, and 
underfed laborers, who are glad to find sympathy among the 
learned and who become willing disciples of all their the- 
ories. 

Second. The young people who come from the middle 
classes of Russian Jewish society, who have had opportun- 
ities for some refinement at home and some education at the 
cheder and other institutions of Jewish learning and have 
acquired some modern education through private instruc- 
tion. These, on coming to America, either become petty 
tradesmen, store-keepers, or, if they are successful in ob- 
taining some support at the beginning, enter a professional 
school and are graduated as lawyers or physicians, the two 
favorite professions among Russian Jews in America. The 
peddlers who sell on the installment plan, or the shopkeep- 
ers, though many of them possess a good knowledge of Juda- 
ism and of Jewish history, and are especially attracted by 
the Zionist movement, having been compelled at first to 
abandon many religious customs and institutions, become 
careless about religion and indifferent to its behests. The 
professional men also forsake religious practices either be- 
cause they have become convinced atheists or agnostics or 
because it pays them better to stand aloof from the syna- 
gogue. It is an old paradox that Jews have greater respect 



PHILADELPHIA 171 

for him who stands at a distance from them in religious 
matters than for one who takes a most active part in the 
synagogue. 

Third. The young people who were born in this country 
or were brought here in childhood and have had the ad- 
vantages of a public school training. These should be the 
chief concern of the communal worker, for on them the 
future of Judaism mainly depends. Their religious edu- 
cation is defective and their religious observances, if they 
do observe anything in deference to their parents, lacks 
spirit and interest. Most of them are not antagonistic to 
religion, but are indifferent to it, and wholesome influences 
may have a salutary effect upon their religious attitude. 
They are unsympathetic with the existing synagogues be- 
cause the synagogue offers them very little, it being entirely 
managed and directed by the older people, who do not and 
cannot understand them. They are indifferent to Jewish 
practice because it has never been presented to them in a 
light that would appeal to their more modern and more 
cultured tastes. If synagogues were established exclusively 
for these young people and their management directed 
toward the needs of this rising generation, they could yet 
be won over to a staunch Judaism. The time is probably 
as yet unripe for such work, but it is not very far distant. 
Modern synagogues, presided over by trained American 
rabbis, will eventually be introduced in the Russian Jewish 
sections of our large cities, and a more perfect and homo- 
geneous religious body will be formed in American Israel. 



(C) CHICAGO 

We find upon investigation that the Russian Jewish 
people have accomplished more than they are generally 
credited with, and that as soon as opportunity is open to 
them they make good use of it and stand at least on a par 
with their brethren of other nationalities. 

They do not wish to be patronized, they desire to be 
understood, and not being understood by their German 
Jewish brethren, who often look down upon them, they 
choose to dwell among their own kind and to live according 
to their traditional customs. They are generally industri- 
ous and thrifty, and their first interest, after providing for 
their families, is in the synagogue and the religious school. 

They are often charged witli being dirty, sometimes 
filthy ; but if we reflect that after arriving on these shores 
their first residence is generally in a neglected section of 
the city, and the first object lessons they receive consist of 
dirty streets and alleys and broken down tenements with- 
out sanitary accommodations, we shall be less ready to find 
fault. Put these immigrants into model houses where bath 
rooms, pure air, and sunshine are not unknown, where the 
members of the family can have sleeping rooms apart from 
the common living rooms, so that privacy is not infringed 
upon, and then if they do not come up to your expectations, 
blame them if you will; but not while they are in such 
dirty, restricted and ill-kept quarters. Blame, first, the 
city administration that allows such disgraceful conditions 
to exist; second, the niggardly householder who will not 
keep his premises in decent condition, but extorts from the 
poor exorbitant rental; and last, the weary mother of 
numerous children, whose two hands must keep house and 
children clean and perforin the many duties that devolve 
upon her. Surely, the maxim of one of our sages, ' ' Judge 
not thy fellow man until thou hast been put in his place, ' ' 
should be borne in mind v/hen such charges are made. 

Surrounded by so many unfavorable conditions, many 
Eussian Jews notwithstanding consider it imperative to be- 

172 



CHICAGO 173 

long to a congregation and to provide religions instruction 
for their children. They know that the public school will 
attend to their secular education, so out of their scant 
earnings they pay synagogue and Talmud Torah (relig- 
ious school) dues. The synagogue plays a very important 
part in the daily life of the orthodox Russian Jew, for his 
life and religion are so closely interwoven that public divine 
worship is to him a duty and a pleasure. The synagogue 
is the religious and social centre around which the activity 
of the community revolves and has now become, since the 
formation of auxiliary loan societies, a distributing agency 
for its various philanthropies, where " personal service " 
is not a fad, but has always been recognized in dealing 
with the unfortunate. Small wonder is it that the ortho- 
dox Russian Jew clings to his synagogue. It is open not 
only *' from early morn till dewy eve," but far into the 
night, and in some cases the doors are never closed. Daily 
worship begins early, so that the laboring man can attend 
service and yet be in time for his work. There are morn- 
ing, afternoon, and evening services — seldom attended by 
women. Often the peddler 's cart can be seen standing near 
the entrance while the owner is at prayer within. On 
Sabbaths and holy days services are always well attended by 
men and women, the latter occupying a gallery set apart 
for their use. 

Expense is not spared in making the exercises interest- 
ing to the older people, but little is done to attract fhe 
younger generation. The beautiful Hebrew language, 
which they do not understand, is used exclusively in the 
service. And when there is a sermon it is in Yiddish, and 
rather tedious and uninteresting for the young people, who 
are almost starving for that religious food which would 
satisfy the heart and mind. 

Connected with the synagogue is the beth hamedrash, or 
house of learning, where students of religious literature 
are always welcome, and Bible and Talmud are studied and 
discussed. Many take advantage of the opportunity thus 
afforded, and form study circles or meet for devotional 
reading. There is much to attract and hold the older gen- 
eration, who are continually receiving accessions from 
abroad and in their lives the synagogue means much, if 
not all worth striving for. 

The beginning of a congregation is generally a minyan 
or gathering of at least ten men for divine worship. This 



174 . RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

is held in* rented quarters. As soon as a sufficient number 
of members are gained they resolve to form an organiza- 
tion, and when funds are forthcoming a house of worship 
is bought or built. 

The Ohave Sholom Mariampol, the oldest congregation, 
began in this way in 1872. Its property was destroyed 
by fire in 1874, after which a hall was again rented. Its 
membership increased rapidly, smaller congregations 
joined it, and its present structure was erected in 1888 
at a cost of $6,250. Nearly all the charitable organiza- 
tions of the West Side can trace their origin to this 
congregation, whose membership is now one hundred and 
fifty. In 1890 certain members became displeased and 
seceded, forming the Mislme U'gemoro Congregation, 
excluding from membership all who were not strict ad- 
herents of traditional law. They now have 55 members 
and own their building. 

The largest congregation is the Anshe Kenesseth Israel, 
which was organized originally as Anshe Russia in 1875. 
In 1887 it united with Kenesseth Israel and later Anshe 
Suwalk joined. It now numbers 200 members, possesses 
a building valued at $35,000, twenty Sepher Torahs (Scrolls 
of the Law), and a large library for religious study circles. 

The synagogues not only serve religious needs but do 
a large amount of philanthropic work. There are about 
twenty-five on the West Side, representing an investment 
of approximately $90,000, and a membership of more 
than 2,000. These congregations are self-supporting, 
members contributing annual dues, ranging from $6 to 
$12. Permanent or life seats are from $100 to $150 each. 
Yearly rentals are from 50 cents to $5, entitling the 
holder to a seat for himself and one in the gallery for his 
wife or other female relative. In addition to synagogue 
dues there are dues for the Talmud Torah (Hebrew Free 
School) ; the Hachnosis Orchim (Shelter for Strangers) ; 
the Beth Moshav Zkeinim (Home for the Aged) ; the 
Lechem L'rovim (Bread for the Hungry) ; the Gomley 
Chesed Shel Emeth (Association for the Free Burial of 
the Poor) ; the free loan associations which loan money 
to those in need and charge no interest; the yeshibahs or 
strictly orthodox advanced schools of Jewish learning in 
this city and in Russia; the Palestine chaluka or charity 
for indigent Jews of the Holy Land. Before Pesach, or 
Passover, a fund is raised to supply the poor with matzoth 



CHICAGO 175 

(Passover cakes) and other necessaries, and when winter 
sets in coal is given to poor familes. The Mariampol Con- 
gregation now gives sick benefits and endowments to 
members, but how this plan will work as time goes on re- 
mains to be seen. 

The few well-to-do men of a congregation often distribute 
many tons of coal among the struggling poor, and with 
the gift is generally given the friendship of the giver. 
The poor man is not regarded as a beggar; he is encour- 
aged to tell his troubles and difficulties and receives in 
return friendly advice and assistance. The free loan 
associations have proven a great success and deserve 
special mention because the recipients of aid show a de- 
sire not to accept charity except when dire necessity 
compels. 

The dues for all the auxiliary societies are collected by 
paid agents who receive about six or seven dollars per 
week. They are furnished with perforated stamp books, 
in which each stamp is a receipt for five or ten cents. They 
give these when they make the weekly collections. This 
way of paying dues is found the most convenient for the 
people of small income. 

We should not be surprised that the Eussian Jews have 
not established large institutions with their own means, 
as the capital to be drawn upon is limited. It is estimated 
that out of an income of seven or eight dollars per week 
an average man gives twelve dollars per year for religious 
or charitable purposes, that is, three per cent, of his gross 
income. 

The use of the synagogues is given freely for meetings, 
religious, charitable, or educational. It shows a broad 
sentiment, when, as was the case one winter, women were 
allowed to speak from the pulpits of orthodox synagogues 
and make appeals for the Beth Moshab Zkeinim Bazaar, 
which was given for the purpose of erecting a home for 
aged Jews, to be conducted according to orthodox custom. 
The religious sentiment underlying this movement was 
strong; it served to enlist orthodox Jews all over the city, 
with the result that in less than a year's time the B. M. Z. 
Association had bought a lot of ground in a good loca- 
tion. The bazaar was then undertaken by a band of noble 
men and women and the gross receipts amounted to over 
$13,000, the expenditures about $2,000. This large 
amount came chiefly from the pockets of the middle class 



176 , RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

and the poor, for tlie wealthy German co-religionists, with 
a few noteworthy exceptions, held aloof. A Jewish phil- 
anthropist encouraged the movement by a donation of 
$20,000, on condition that a building valued at $40,000 be 
erected. On May 3, 1903, the Home, costing in all about 
$85,000, received its first inmates and it has been success- 
ful in upholding religious regulations. A second bazaar 
for the purpose of paying off a mortgage of $20,000 was 
recently given and the amount realized was sufficient, leav- 
ing the building free of debt. 

One excellent result of this movement was the bringing 
out of the younger people interested in orthodox Judaism 
and the evidence it gave them of the effective power of 
organization. Would that these young men and women, 
reared in this blessed land of liberty, with enthusiasm 
unbounded, with spiritual yearnings unsatisfied, could 
find adequate provision made for them in the synagogue. 
But there is none and they remain away. The only op- 
portunity they have of hearing an English sermon or 
prayer is in the reform or conservative temples, where 
changes in the service have been made, of which they can- 
not approve, but which they are gradually led to condone. 
The strong attachment they feel for the traditions of 
their fathers could yet be maintained and developed and 
directed into desirable channels if the eyes of their elders 
could be opened and they would insist on having a mod- 
ern orthodox English preacher in the synagogue and some 
portion of the service in English. 

The young people are gradually drifting away from re- 
ligious influences. They cannot and will not adapt them- 
selves to the old methods that do not appeal to their spir- 
itual instincts, and their elders cannot be made to realize 
the necessity of the compromise, but go blindly their own 
way. The result is that their sons and daughters are be- 
coming ethical culturists, free thinkers, agnostics and 
atheists. From a strict and to them unintelligent ortho- 
doxy these have gone to the other extreme, because they 
were not properly instructed in the principles of their re- 
ligion, which are exemplified by its ceremonies. The 
Sabbath is desecrated, and indifference in religious mat- 
ters reigns. A modern orthodox English preacher imbued 
with the old Jewish spirit could influence the younger 
generation. A young people's synagogue should be estab- 
lished on the West Side with attractive services and a 



CHICAGO 177 

sermon on Sabbatli afternoons and at any other time that 
might be deemed advisable. The older people do not will- 
ingly break their Sabbaths and would be only too glad to see 
that their children did not, but it seems they cannot take 
the initiative in providing a religious stimulus for the 
young people in accordance with modern methods. That 
must come from those who understand the necessity 
for immediate action. There are some who realize this 
necessity but the opposition to any innovation is still 
great and v/e can but hope that time and intelligence will 
solve the serious problem. In the meantime, the young 
people find satisfaction in forming Zionist societies and 
literary, social and educational organizations, which fur- 
nish them an outlet for their surplus energies. Foremost 
among these are the Hebrew Literary Association (or- 
ganized in 1885), the Self Educational Club (organized 
in 1894), and the Gates of the Order Knights of Zion. 

What is being done for the religious needs of the chil- 
dren of the district? For the boys much, for the girls 
comparatively little. The Moses Montefiore Hebrew Free 
School, which is the principal religious school on the West 
Side, has an attendance of 800 boys, ranging from four to 
thirteen years of age. This is inadequate for the popula- 
tion and the management has built a branch school which 
accommodates about 600 boys. Chedarim or private 
classes, are to be found in many blocks of the crowded 
district. The hours and subjects taught are the same as 
at the Talmud Torah, but in some instances more modern 
methods are employed. Many of the classes are held 
amid unhealthy surroundings in basements and living 
rooms. They usually number from twenty to forty 
pupils. About 1,200 boys receive instruction in these 
classes. The children attend until they become bar mitz- 
vah (formally admitted to the faith at the age of thir- 
teen) or go to high school, when, if the parents can 
afford, private teachers are employed. Probably 600 
children take private lessons, paying from $2 to $5 per 
month. The hours for those who attend the Talmud 
Torah are from 9 A. M. to 3 :30 P. M. for children not at- 
tending public school, and for older children from 4 P. 
M. to 7:30 P. M. The subjects taught are the Hebrew 
alphabet, reading, grammar, translation of the Penta- 
teuch, Prophets, Hagiographa, into Yiddish, and portions 
of the Mishna and Gemara. Sixteen teachers and two 



178 RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

janitors are employed. Books are furnished to pupils 
gratis when they are unable to pay for them. 

During a visit to the Hebrew Free School, I found it a 
rare treat to hear boys of six years of age and upwards 
translate into Yiddish the Hebrew of the Pentateuch and 
the Prophets and then repeat in English the substance of 
what they had been learning. I was surprised to note 
that many ethical lessons had been imparted by the 
teacher during the course of his instruction. We are apt 
to condemn the methods of these teachers because they 
are not up-to-date. I doubt, however, if all our boasted 
progress in educational work can produce as successful 
results. Little boys translating and explaining from the 
original the stories of Noah, of Joseph, of the Tribe of 
Benjamin, or a chapter from Isaiah, with the ethical les- 
sons to be derived therefrom, and receiving from the 
teacher such commentary as no English translation con- 
tains. And no breath of higher criticism, so-called, inter- 
feres with the implicit belief in the occurrence of the 
events described, but a deep sense of the omnipotence and 
mercy of God and an unquestioning faith in divine provi- 
dence are inculcated. 

I almost forgave the uncleanly condition of the build- 
ing, the lack of ventilation of the rooms, although there 
were many windows through which fresh air could have 
entered; the loud tone of the recitations; the pounding on 
the desk for order, and the untidy appearance of some of 
the boys, — when I saw before me so many bright faces 
full of energy and intelligence, and above all, faith. Why 
need we feel discouraged as to the future of Judaism in 
this country when we see a rising generation trained in 
Jewish lore, and in the secular knowledge which the pub- 
lic school offers, that will mold its destinies? For these 
children of Russian and Polish Jewish parentage have 
within them all the elements that will give them power 
when they grow to manhood. The ambition, perseverance 
and scholarship which is their inheritance and which will 
find an outlet under the free institutions of this great 
country, if properly directed by men and women of cul- 
ture and piety, will serve to hasten the end of what Zang- 
will terms a ** transitional " period in Judaism. 

But to direct them aright? Have they the men and 
the women to do it? Some who could be leaders have de- 
serted their people, have moved to fashionable quarters, 



CHICAGO 179 

and to their sliame, be it said, pay no heed to the needs 
of the district from which they hailed, and rather wish to 
sever their connection with those they left behind. Others 
have the ability and the will, but cannot spare the time. 
Let us hope that the period is not far distant when from 
their own ranks will arise teachers and leaders, imbued 
with the modern spirit and the old scholarship and rever- 
ence for the law and its traditions, who will instill into the 
minds of the children such respect for the historical cere- 
monies of Judaism, by dwelling upon the great ethical 
principles that underlie them, that they will not fail to 
observe them, for only by the intelligent practice of these 
ceremonies can Judaism be preserved and fulfil its 
mission. 

The ethical value of religious observance is great, 
though not so generally recognized because the mechanical 
performance of a precept — although it in itself carries 
an ethical lesson with it — has been impressed upon the 
child's mind to the exclusion of its spiritual meaning. 
However it may be in Europe, in this country a boy or 
girl instinctively seeks a reason for everything. When 
he is not taught the reason for religious observances, they 
lose their value in his eyes, and he often disregards them 
as unworthy of the enlightenment of the present day. 
Where, as is so often the case, home training is insuifi- 
cient, the religious school should step in and supply the 
deficiencies. Not only should the meaning of the laws 
and ceremonies be taught to young and old, but also the 
difference between an obligatory and an optional precept 
(din and minhag). The neglect of this branch of instruc- 
tion brings about serious dangers. The local rabbis in 
their Yiddish derashas (sermons) are content to expound 
this or that passage of Holy Writ, ignoring entirely pres- 
ent conditions and dangers; an English speaking rabbi 
who could influence the young is unknown in the district. 
Even the sanctity of the Sabbath is being violated to a 
much greater extent than would be the case were some 
powerful voice raised against it. While the majority of 
the older people are strict in their observance of it, 
especially in the home, where it is greeted by even the 
poorest with a little special preparation, many of the 
young men and women are compelled by economic condi- 
tions to work on the Sabbath. Are these to be censured 
as much as the Russian Jews who own large mercantile 



180 BELiaiOUS ACTIVITY 

establishtnents in the heart of the Jewish district, who are 
far beyond want, whose employees are Jewish, whose 
customers are Jewish, and who keep their places of busi- 
ness open on the Sabbath and on Sunday as well? Many 
realize the insidious danger of such flagrant violations of 
the Sabbath, but as yet only a feeble effort has been made 
to check them. If the rich, who are the employers of the 
poor, could be influenced, some effective work might be 
accomplished. 

The fact that there is no provision made for religious in- 
struction of the girls, except through their home training, 
led the Chicago Section of the Council of Jewish Women 
to open a Sabbath school for them. It was successful from 
the start. Three hundred girls took advantage of the op- 
portunity afforded; many more were turned away for 
lack of accommodation. Sinai Congregation contributed 
the greater part of the funds and flnally took the school 
under its supervision. The sessions are held weekly on 
Sabbath afternoons from 2 to 4 o'clock in the Jewish Man- 
ual Training School. There are now over 400 pupils in 
attendance. 

A few of the residents who understand the needs of the 
district have started a religious school where 200 boys and 
girls receive instruction in Hebrew, Jewish history and re- 
ligion; but the school is yet in its infancy and struggling 
for existence owing to lack of financial backing. Sessions 
are held twice a week. 

Another hopeful sign of an awakening to the needs of 
the present day was the opening of a religious school by 
the Chicago Zion Gate, Order Knights of Zion. About 
150 boys and girls attend this school, which holds its ses- 
sions on Sabbaths and Sundays. Fifty of the older boys 
have organized a club called Sons of American Zionists, 
and have bought out of their own treasury a small library 
of Jewish books in the English language. English is used 
by the teachers and modern methods prevail in the school. 
Hebrew songs are included in the course of instruction. 
There should be many such schools not only for weekly 
but for daily sessions, and where girls as well as boys are 
welcome. But help must come from outside the district, 
for the drain upon the income of the residents is already 
too great. 

The Zionist movement is also one of the causes which 
has led to a religious awakening, and has resolved itself 



CHICAGO 181 

largely into an educational revival, chiefly on matters of 
Jewish interest. Although the older people have not to 
a great extent joined the movement, their sympathies 
have been enlisted; the young people, however, grasped 
its great significance, and many who had drifted away 
from Judaism have been won back, have begun to take an 
interest in Jewish subjects, and to study the Jewish situa- 
tion. The Zion societies study Jewish history and litera- 
ture and the Hebrew language, and do literary and social 
work. After the second Basle Congress the success and 
stability of fraternal orders in America being noted, the 
order Knights of Zion was organized, and has proven suc- 
cessful. It consists of a number of Gates. The Chicago 
Zion Gate, besides holding study meetings for its own 
members, opened the religious school referred to. The 
Kadimoh Gate, composed of young men, conducts a read- 
ing room and gives courses of Friday evening lectures on 
Jewish topics. The Clara De Hirsch Gate has a Bible 
class and furnishes a teacher for the religious school. In 
fact, wherever a Zion organization is formed some kind 
of religious study is introduced, and the seeds sown will 
undoubtedly bear fruit in the future, for the Jewish con- 
sciousness has been aroused. These Zionist societies and 
other fraternal orders, in conjunction with the Hebrew 
Literary Association, the Self Educational Club, the 
Beaconsfield and sundry social clubs, together with the co- 
operation of the rabbis of the city, and the Council of 
Jewish Women, could by united action maintain a young 
people's synagogue and daily religious schools free from 
the objections urged against the chedarim. The younger 
generation would attend in large numbers and the chil- 
dren would be kept from the evil influences of the street 
and the alley. 

The Rabbinical Association has made the experiment of 
holding Friday evening services in the Jewish Manual 
Training School, and reports sufficient encouragement to 
warrant continuance. 

The young people are aroused to the importance of ac- 
tion. This is evidenced by their interest in a movement 
which is now launched by them for a Chicago Hebrew 
Institute that shall include synagogue, religious schools, 
classes, clubs, gymnasium, and the various forms of mod- 
ern culture and entertainment, physical, moral and in- 
tellectual, under Jewish auspices, with the doors open for 



182 RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY 

worship; study, and recreation. The time is ripe for such 
a movement. The Russian Jews are overburdened by their 
obligations. The young people, particularly, need intelli- 
gent, unselfish, enthusiastic leadership. Who will become 
the torch-bearer to this people, singularly gifted with re- 
ligious enthusiasm and respect for scholarship? 



VI 
EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 



U) NEW YORK 
By J. K. Paulding 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

By Chakles S. Bernheimer 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Philip Davis 



EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

(A) NEW YORK 

The agencies at work for the education of the Russian 
'Jew in New York are so various that their mere enumera- 
tion would extend, in all probability, over a whole page of 
this present volume. In the wider sense attaching to the 
word education at the present day there would have to be 
included in such an enumeration more than a passing ref- 
erence to the conditions, physical, industrial, and moral, 
in which the lives of the Jewish immigrant and his chil- 
dren are set. The mere geography of his environment, 
when consideration is had for its effect upon overcrowd- 
ing, could not be ignored. The influence of the shop, of 
the home, and of the society about him, would have to be 
examined and estimated if one would gain a correct con- 
clusion concerning the education — in this, its wider sense 
— which the Jew is receiving in the process of his trans- 
formation from an Old-World subject into a citizen of 
the New. 

It is not, however, primarily with this wider aspect of 
the educational problem that the present paper has to do. 
In its narrower sense, education includes only those agen- 
cies that are consciously at work for the training of mind, 
body or character. In a sense narrower still, the term ed- 
ucation is sometimes confined to the first of these three — 
the training of the mind; but since the discoveries of 
Froebel and Pestalozzi of the value of the children's 
play-hour, to say nothing of the possibilities of character- 
building through direct moral instruction, this would be 
held but an unsatisfactory definition of the province of 
human life over which education, as a science, is set in 
authority. 

Such conscious agencies for the education of the people 
are everywhere divided into three classes: — (1) the State 
directed; (2) those instituted and carried on by private 
philanthropists whether in societies or as individuals; and 



NEW YORK 



185 



(3) those arising from the people themselves. To one 
or another of these three classes may be referred every 
effort making at present for the education of the Russian 
Jew in New York. 

Of course the first of all such agencies, in the extent of 
its influence, is the public school. There are public schools 
in New York, which, on the Day of Atonement, or some 
other religious holiday, are almost emptied of their pupils. 
A reference to the subjoined table^ will give ample evi- 



SCHOOL LOCATION 

131 272 2nd St. 

79 42 1st St, 

13) (289 E. Houston St. 

13 \ 1239 E. Houston St. 

22 / I Stanton and Sheriff Sts. 

22 3 ( Stanton and Sheriff Sts. 

174 125 Attorney St. 

20 ) I Rivington and Eldridge Sts. 

20 f ) Rivington and Eldridge Sts. 

160 I \ Rivington and Suffolk Sts. 

160 i 1 Rivington and Suffolk Sts. 

4 Rivington and Ridge Sts. • 

88 Rivington and Lewis Sts. 

140 116 Norfolk St. 

161 Delancey and Ludlow^ Sts. 
92 Broome and Ridge Sts. 

120 187 Broome St. 

34 ) ( Broome and Sheriff Sts. 

34 ) I Broome and Sheriff Sts. 

110 Broome and Cannon Sts. 

137 Grand and Ludlov^^ Sts. 

75) (25 Norfolk St. 

75 ( 125 Norfolk St. 

71 i Hester and Chrystie Sts. 

7 f ) Hester and Chrystie Sts. 

42 ) ( Hester and Orchard Sts. 

42 i i Hester and Orchard Sts. 

144 Hester and Allen Sts. 

1 ) ( Henry and Catharine Sts. 

1 J ( Henry and Catharine Sts. 

2 116 Henry St. 
147 289 E. Broadway 

12 371 Madison St. 

177) (Monroe and Market Sts. 

177 J 1 Monroe and Market Sts. 
136 68 Monroe St. 

31 Monroe and Gouverneur Sts. 
112 83 Roosevelt St. 



REGISTRATION 


NO. JEWS 


PER CENT. 










JEWS 


1496 






1448 


99 


2197 






1800 


82 


951 


(G. 


D.) 


893 


94 


2203 


(P. 


D.) 


2140 


97 


1267 


(B. 


D.) 


1238 


98 


2607 


(P. 


D.) 


2575 


99 


1925 






1897 


98 


2474 


(B. 


D.) 


2411 


97 


2168 


(G. 


D.) 


2073 


96 


1482 


(B. 


D.) 


1471 


99 


1806 


(P. 


D.) 


1797 


99 


2183 






2178 


99 


2895 






2766 


96 


1617 






1610 


99 


1797 






1784 


99 


1741 






1705 


96 


761 






741 


91 


992 


(B. 


D.) 


914 


93 


1940 


(P. 


D.) 


1903 


98 


1654 






1391 


84 


1565 






1552 


99 


756 


(B. 


D.) 


743 


98 


1527 


(P. 


D.) 


1416 


93 


1744 


(B. 


D.) 


1687 


97 


1633 


(G. 


D.) 


1558 


95 


1365 


(P. 


D.) 


1347 


98 


1320 


(G. 


D.) 


1303 


99 


1723 






1704 


99 


1324 


(B. 


D.) 


938 


71 


1493 


(G. 


D.) 


1077 


72 


3256 






3238 


96 


2933 






2732 


93 


2011 






1748 


87 


1056 


(G. 


D.) 


1032 


98 


1502 


(P. 


D.) 


1409 


94 


630 






620 


98 


2144 






2105 


98 


467 






59 


12 



64,605 



61,103 



dence of this. The preponderance of Jewish pupils over 
all others in the schools situated below Houston Street on 
the East Side is so overwhelming as to render of compara- 

1 The table was made up by the editor from a record of the registration and 
attendance of each of the schools on October 1st, 1903, which was the Jewish 
Day of Atonement of that year. 

Of the total of 64,605 puoils in the district, 61,103, or 94.5 per cent., are 
Jews. 



186 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

lively little value questions directed to the teachers con- 
cerning the relative scholarship and aptitude of Jewish 
and non-Jewish pupils, unless these teachers have had ex- 
perience elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is much in the tes- 
timony of teachers to confirm the prevailing impression that 
these pupils — the children, for the most part, of poor 
Jewish immigrants from Russia — are among the bright- 
est in attendance at the public schools. Certainly they 
rank high in all examinations for advancement to the sec- 
ondary institutions of learning such as the high schools 
and city college, — and this not merely, it may be be- 
lieved, because of a keener instinct of competition. 
American boys have this instinct in an equal degree, al- 
though it may be true that it is more strongly developed 
in the young Jew than in other children of foreign birth 
or parentage. In itself, and provided that it submits to 
correction, it may be little more than the index of an alert 
mind. 

In spite of the bad industrial conditions prevailing 
' among the Jews of the lower East Side, the parents, or if 
not the parents, the children themselves are quick to avail 
themselves of whatever privileges their new surroundings 
extend to them. Among these the privilege of most worth 
is the education offered them, and they are not slow to 
appreciate its advantages. The children begin their at- 
^ tendance at the public school within a very short time after 
their arrival here, the younger ones finding their way into 
the numerous kindergartens connected with private insti- 
tutions. Very soon, especially to the little girls, the public 
school teacher becomes a strong, in many instances the 
strongest, influence in the lives of these children. They 
learn to look upon her as a model of good taste — first, it 
is true, chiefly in external things, such as clothes and man- 
ner of speech, — but afterwards, very often, as a pattern 
of deportment as well. Happy the teacher v/ho can '' live 
up to " the ideal that has been formed of her! These 
children, most teachers report, are singularly docile, — not 
the girls only, but the boys as well. In some cases, indeed, 
this docility amounts to a defect (of which, however, 
teachers are not wont to complain), — the children seeming 
to lack those healthy instincts for mischievous play that 
are the accompaniment of happier childhood. Later, 
however, when the influence of the street (not always a 
bad one) has had time to make itself apparent, they are 



NEW YORK 187 

apt to develop the high spirits that are a prerogative of 
their years. 

Of the interest and ability displayed by these children 
of the public school age, let some of their teachers speak: 

^' Jewish children, as a rule, are bright, attentive and 
studious. ' ' 

'' They are generally anxious to learn, and except in 
English, compare favorably with other nationalities." 

'' They rank among the highest. They are far more 
earnest and ambitious [than other scholars] and many of 
them supplement their school work with outside reading. ' ' 

'' As a race, their ability to comprehend instruction is 
excellent. The poorer class of Jewish children is ahead of 
the poorer class of other nationalities. They are not so 
smart (?) as the average American, but have greater emo- 
tional capacity. They are more receptive than self -active. ' ' 

Other teachers have observed no marked distinction be- 
tween their pupils of Jewish birth and those belonging to 
other races. 

Concerning the scholarship developed, the teacher last 
quoted says, ' ' They seem to grasp ' beautiful ideas ' eager- 
ly. Manual training they enjoy." 

Other opinions are : 

" They have a special aptitude for studies that appeal 
to the imagination, while matters of fact excite less 
interest. ' ' 

'' They excel in mathematics, English and history. They 
are deficient in drawing and shop-work." 

'* Their scholarship is affected, I think, by their ig- 
norance of other surroundings than those to which they are 
habituated. . . . There is a decided lack of the power 
of concentration and steady application, owing, probably, 
to a very nervous temperament. The study of good Eng- 
lish poetry seems to have developed a writing in rhyme, 
in a good percentage ; in the few, it is even poetry, ' ' — but 
the same teacher adds, in another place, '' We rarely find 
the artistic temperament except as expressing itself in 
music. ' ' 

Most teachers agree that the young Jewish children are 
exceedingly patriotic, although it is suggested that the 
patriotism must be, in some cases, of a merely imitative 
order, considering the tender age at which it is developed. 
One principal expresses the opinion that the Jewish boys 
of the East Side *' are born politicians and their chief in- 



188 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

terest in American institutions arises from the fact that 
they furnish an area for political contests." Certainly 
the East Side boy grows up in a perilous atmosphere, po- 
litically considered, and too often develops into the thing 
to which we need not believe him born. This public school 
'^ patriotism," of which we hear so much, is by no means 
a product deserving of unqualified praise. With no desire 
to disparage the good work of the schools in familiarizing 
the little foreigner with the more elementary of those ideas 
that lie at the root of the national political institutions, it 
is doubtful whether in practice he is not very often im- 
bued with a military chauvinism very far removed from 
the true spirit of American patriotism. We are all rather 
prone to forget that it is the coarser side of any abstract 
proposition that inevitably impresses itself upon the minds 
of boys, of whatever nationality, and that the concrete 
image that is carried away from this " patriotic " cult is 
apt to be the mere drum-beating and flag raising that 
makes such easy and instant appeal to instincts but little 
allied to those of justice, fair-play, and an elevated love 
for humanity as a whole. 

Coming back to the subject of the proficiency, as well 
as the special aptitudes, displayed by the Russian Jewish 
children in the public schools as compared with those of 
other nationalities, it does not appear to the present 
writer that sufficient material is at hand to warrant the 
formation of a judgment having much claim to accuracy. 
As a general rule, and taking into consideration the moral 
as well as the mental qualities that go to the formation of 
good scholarship, it will probably be found that the best 
scholars come from the best homes. Now the Jewish peo- 
ple have long been celebrated for the beauty of their fam- 
ily life, and we should therefore expect them to furnish a 
good percentage of the best scholarship realized in the 
schools; but it cannot be disputed that the homes of too 
many of the recent refugees from Russia, Roumania, and 
other European countries, partly by reason of industrial 
conditions, in part owing to a moral break-down incident 
to the upturning of the tradition of centuries, have ceased 
to be homes at all in the true sense of the word, and it 
would be unfair to look to the children of these dwellings 
for an exemplification of the highest attainable type of 
scholarship. Often, indeed, individual scholars come sur- 
prisingly near it, especially on the intellectual side, and 



NEW YORK 189 

it is no part of the writer's purpose to suggest that as a 
class they fall farther below it than the equally unfortu- 
nate of other nationalities. 

It seems clear that whatever the defects of the scholar- 
ship realized, they are attributable as much to the teacher 
and to the system employed as to the pupils. Considering 
the responsiveness of Jewish children to imaginative 
stimuli of one variety or another, it would seem desirable 
to emphasize to a greater degree than is done in other mat- 
ters such as the training of the pov/er of observation and 
the cultivation of habits of application. These receive 
admirable illustration in the system of manual training 
afforded by the work shops, but the work shops are few in 
number, and there seems at present but little disposition 
on the part of the school authorities to increase them and 
extend their efficiency. The probability is, if this were 
done, that they would form an admirable corrective to the 
too exclusively intellectual activity of the class-rooms. 

One of the great aims of all education, undoubtedly, is 
to develop the true individuality of the child; and it is 
not surprising that but little attention can be devoted to 
this in the overcrowded class-rooms of our public schools. 
But sometimes directly wrong methods are adopted, as 
when a teacher encourages in a forward or self-conscious 
child the tendencies that require stimulation in an unduly 
retiring or modest one. There seems to be a smaller 
proportion of bashfulness among Jewish children than 
among those of other nationalities, and therefore less need 
to have resort to devices, such as public declamation and 
quotation-citing, designed to overcome this evil. I have 
often been present at such exhibitions in down-town school- 
houses where the display of vanity and of a certain self- 
conscious forwardness inconsistent with the modesty of 
childhood was painful in the extreme, and I have observed 
such a display more frequently among the little girls than 
among their little brothers. 

The story is told (by President G. Stanley Hall, I think) 
of a class of children in a Boston school, the majority of 
whom believed the real size of a cow to be the space oc- 
cupied by its picture in their spelling books. This points 
a finger at the city child's ordinary ignorance of nature 
and country surroundings, and we should expect to find 
this ignorance intensified in the little Jewish children 
whose lives have been confined within such narrow city 



190 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

boundaries as limit the district cramped on two sides by 
the river, and on a third side by the Bowery, that broad and 
dangerous thoroughfare which an unwritten rule forbids 
the younger children ever to cross. The remedy for this 
is not school, but more parks and open air life, and the 
remedy is being rapidly applied, every year adding to the 
number of parks and open-air play grounds. The Jewish 
people are generous patrons of the parks, and with the 
natural intelligence of the children, it is probable that the 
defect of experience which at present hampers some de- 
partments of the school work will tend more and more to 
disappear. 

When we come to a consideration of the secondary 
schools, we are struck with the large percentage of Jewish 
scholars and their relatively high rank, particularly in ex- 
amination tests. Of course, a considerable proportion of 
these students are the children of parents who have been 
settled long in this country, and are not, therefore, to be 
identified with the class we are studying, but in the re- 
cently established boys' high schools, the children of re- 
cent Jewish immigrants numbered about 41 per cent, when 
inquiry was made. These high schools (both for boys and 
girls) are doing an excellent work, both in filling a need 
long unsupplied in the city's educational system, and in 
setting the pace for a higher standard than has hitherto 
prevailed in such institutions as the City College (for 
boys) and the Normal College (for girls). The high school 
teachers speak in the highest terms of the natural ability 
and persistence of their pupils of Russian Jewish origin 
and have many instances to relate of hardships overcome 
by boy and girl scholars in their struggle for an education. 
The girls, in especial, seem anxious to make up for every 
lesson they are compelled to lose, and after the holidays 
would keep the teachers occupied until the late evening of 
every day hearing omitted recitations, had not a rule been 
adopted excusing their absences. It is not with the grade 
of scholarship attained by their pupils that criticism (if 
criticism there is to be) need concern itself, so much as 
with the motive and spirit at work beneath their activity. 
That the motive of commercial advantage holds a very 
high place in the whole movement is the common testi- 
mony of teachers. Parents who are themselves at a disad- 
vantage as compared with their neighbors would naturally 
be quick to respond to such a motive in behalf of their 



NEW YORK 191 

children, and there are many indications that a lively 
realization of this is present with the children as well. The 
instinct of success, so strong in the Jewish people, accounts 
for much prize-taking and high standing in the class-room, 
but for the formation of a finer type of scholarship there 
is necessar}^ the cultivation of a greater degree of disin- 
terestedness. The comparative absence of such a quality 
(difficult, indeed, of development under the prevailing in- 
dustrial conditions) is what constitutes the principal flaw 
in the scholarship at present attained by the children of 
Jewish immigrants. That it will tend to disappear as a 
more comfortable material standard is realized, is easy to 
believe when we bethink ourselves of the strain of ideality, 
the endowment of imaginative power, that exists side by 
side in their souls with the instinct for material advance- 
ment. 

Two institutions, already mentioned (the City College 
and the Normal College), stand at the head of the city's 
free educational system and in both the attendance of Jew- 
ish pupils is very large. These two institutions, together 
with the Training School for teachers, a state institution, 
supply the great majority of the new teachers who are re- 
ceived each year into the city's public school system. What 
proportion of these new teachers are Russian Jews would 
be an interesting inquiry, were the facts accessible. That 
the teaching profession is an attractive one to the chil- 
dren of these immigrants admits of no doubt whatever. 
The only real question concerns the degree of its attrac- 
tiveness as compared with other professions, such as law 
and medicine, and this is difficult to determine, among 
other reasons, for the economic one that the pursuit of all 
special studies involves an outlay of time and money be- 
yond what is commonly expended upon obtaining the qual- 
ifications necessary for a teacher's equipment. 

Finally, with respect to the higher learning, the great 
increase in the number of Jews in attendance upon the 
classes at Columbia and the University of New York has 
been the subject of recent remark. That this increase is 
drawn from the class of recent immigrants is, on the face 
of it, probable, and can be easily demonstrated by a refer- 
ence to the secondary schools of which these pupils are 
graduates. Nor is the number confined to those who are 
pursuing the full university course, since many whose eco- 
nomic position compelled them to accept employment as 



192 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

teachers or otherwise supplement their earlier training 
by attending special courses held at hours adapted to their 
convenience. 

Coming now to the private agencies at work in New 
York for the education and spiritual advancement of the 
Russian Jews, we find a great number, of w^hich it will only 
be possible, within our present limits, to go into particu- 
lars concerning a few. Some of these institutions are sup- 
ported and managed by American Jews for the benefit of 
their co-religionists from Russia and other parts of East- 
ern Europe; others are conducted entirely by non-Jews on 
a completely non-sectarian basis, and the people sought 
to be benefited avail themselves, without distinction, of 
both. This readiness to embrace the opportunities offered, 
combined with the keen intellectual curiosity of the race, 
has rendered this people, in the opinion of many, the most 
promising of all in the field of social experiment. 

The largest single work of the character now under dis- 
cussion is carried on in New York by the Educational Al- 
liance, — a union, originally, of three societies, Jewish in 
their membership, established to bring culture within the 
reach of the more destitute of the race. The consistent 
aim of this institution, since its foundation, has been the 
Americanization of the foreign Jew, and the first steps in 
this process (the English classes for immigrants) have fol- 
lowed closely upon the earlier Baron de Hirseh classes, 
long housed in the building of the Alliance. In these 
classes it happens not seldom that children are found on 
the very day of their landing in America. They are regu- 
larly prepared, both as regards language and scholarship, 
to enter the class at the public school appropriate to 
their age. During the season of the year when the public 
evening schools are closed, evening classes for immigrants 
are opened by the Alliance, so that no tii'ae may be lost in 
the acquisition of the first requisite of intelligent citizen- 
ship. 

But besides these elementary classes designed to meet 
the needs of the immigrants and their young children, 
there are classes for nearly every grade of culture, the 
subject-list including languages, literature, history, civics, 
mathematics, natural science, music, cookery, book-keeping, 
drawing, millinery, typewriting, philosophy, gymnastics, 
and religion. At first the most successful of these classes 
were those that addressed themselves to a practical result 



NEW YOBK 393 

— the enabling of pupils to pass the state, or regents' ex- 
aminations in specified subjects. A change, greatly to be 
commended, has recently been introduced, to favor the 
classes designed to stimulate general culture, with the 
result that " cramming " for an examination is now dis- 
couraged. As a result, principally, of the influence of the 
late Prof. Thomas Davidson and Mr. Edward King, a 
group of earnest students of the higher laws of history 
and social science has been formed, and some of these are 
beginning to take an active part in the conduct of the out- 
lying portions of the institution's work. There is some 
reason to suppose that too great leniency was observed at 
first in the matter of permitting students to select at ran- 
dom the classes they preferred to attend, the evil showing 
itself in a constant shifting interest from one subject to 
another, as one or another enthusiasm predominated in an 
unripe brain. Greater systemization and a limitation 
upon the number of classes permitted to be attended by a 
single pupil have assisted in reducing this tendency. The 
building of the Alliance includes an assembly-hall, a 
library and a gymnasium in addition to its class, club and 
play-rooms, and lectures (for the most part under the 
auspices of the Board of Education), entertainments, ex- 
hibitions, and concerts follow one another in quick suc- 
cession through the winter and spring months. In partic- 
ular, the concert feature has been carefully developed, the 
resources of the neighborhood being drawn upon to form 
a promising chorus and orchestra. Picture exhibitions 
have also been held, and one was held in which the work 
of East Side artists alone was illustrated. On Sunday 
afternoons children's entertainments have been held, 
while legal holidays and Jewish festivals are always hon- 
ored with appropriate observances. A comparatively recent 
departure has been to open the building on Friday even- 
ings for social purposes only. 

The three leading social settlements of the lower East 
Side are the Nurses', College, and University Settlements, 
the first two having women as residents, the third having 
men. Of the work of these institutions it is, perhaps, cor- 
rect to say that it is individual rather than general, in- 
tensive rather than widespread. 

The children that begin in the kindergarten and grow 
up through a whole series of clubs, coming to the house of 
the settlement for most of the amusement and some little 



194 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

of the discipline of their most impressionable years, have 
a chance to acquire something that shall exert a profound 
influence upon their future lives. The danger is lest they 
come to regard themselves as a society apart, by reason 
of an external superiority of manners and taste, or, escap- 
ing that, lest they mistake the refinement of settlement 
life for the end in itself and content themselves with an 
effort to realize that, careless of the more pressing con- 
siderations that occupy their less privileged neighbors. 
But though such dangers exist, the young men and women 
are numerous who owe to the settlement an enlarged pur- 
pose and a more satisfying outlook upon the world than 
they would have been likely to obtain, at least so early in 
their lives, without its instrumentality. Except among the 
clubs of the youngest there is little direct instruction in 
any settlement with which I happen to be acquainted, — 
and this not because it was undesired, but because classes 
did not seem to flourish in the atmosphere of sociability 
and light-hearted amusement that usually prevailed there. 
But all the more, on this account, is the influence per- 
meative, that it does not seem to come in the way made 
familiar, and therefore disliked, of the instruction in 
school, but rather to be distilled through the medium of 
games, conversation, etc., until it is unconsciously ab- 
sorbed. Therefore I think that the little immigrant chil- 
dren of the East Side who have drifted into the settle- 
ments (only a very small proportion of the whole) have 
come out of them again much modified in character, pur- 
poses, opinions — in nearly every way. 

The value of a technical training for boys, fittmg them 
to practice the mechanical trades, has been recognized by 
Jewish philanthropists as having a special application to 
their race, by reason of some inherited deficiencies in this 
regard; and in illustration of their belief two admirable 
institutions — the Hebrew Technical Institute and the 
Baron de Hirsch Trade School have come into existence in 
New York. The first of these, the Technical Institute, 
does not teach boys a trade, but takes them at an early 
age (twelve and a half years) and instructs them in such 
studies as will be most likely to fit them for success in me- 
chanical pursuits. For the first two years this instruction 
is quite general in character, but during the last year they 
are permitted to specialize their studies in the direction of 
the particular taste they may have acquired, without 



NEW YORK 195 

actually studying a trade. The studies necessary to the 
development of a general intelligence — English, mathe- 
matics and history — are maintained throughout the three- 
year course, and along with them goes a graduated instruc- 
tion in wood-work, free hand and mechanical drawing, 
metal work, and applied science. The tuition, tools, and 
text-books are all furnished free, together with shower 
baths, bathing forming part of the exercises, and the only 
charge made in connection with the institution is that of 
one cent a day, or five cents a week, for the warm lunch 
provided in the school refectory. The present number of 
pupils is 249, and the school has 476 living graduates, of 
whom 72 per cent, are following mechanical work. 

At the Baron de Hirsch Trade School the instruction 
is also free, but the applicant for admission, who must be 
sixteen years old, must show that he has some means of 
support while learning the trade. The aim of the school 
is to afford a working knowledge of one of the following 
trades: Plumbing and gas-fitting, carpentry, house paint- 
ing, sign-painting, machinist and electrician. The time 
taken to acquire this knowledge is five and one-half 
months, the first portion of the course being devoted to a 
teaching of the principles of the trade and the latter part 
to their practical application. A preference is given, in 
the matter of admission, to Jewish boys born in Russia 
and Roumania, and statistics taken from seven successive 
classes show that these boys form about 48.3 per cent, of 
the whole number of graduates, the other pupils of foreign 
birth numbering 19.2 per cent., while 32.5 per cent, are 
Jewish boys born in the United States. Over 77 per cent, 
of the graduates of the previous five years were reported 
in 1899 to be still working at the trades learned in the 
school. 

Closely adjoining the boys' trade school is the Training 
School for Girls, instituted by Baroness de Hirsch. This 
contains 35 training girls, who live there all the time 
and receive instruction in millinery, cooking, washing, 
machine-operating, hand-sewing, and dress-making, be- 
sides sheltering some 65 more working girls, who pay three 
dollars a week for their board. Provision is made for 30 
free scholars. The institution is non-sectarian, Baroness 
de Hirsch having prescribed as a condition to this gift that 
ten per cent, of the inmates should be Gentiles. 

The trade education for girls is looked out for by the 



196 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

Hebrew 'Technical School for Girls, which has a commer- 
cial department, containing, according to the last report, 
108 pupils, and one of manual training, containing 45 
pupils. The girls attending this school are about fifteen 
years old, and are all graduates of the public schools. The 
aim of the commercial department is to turn out good as- 
sistant book-keepers and stenographers; and the graduates 
readily secure positions. The graduates of the manual 
training department are also making profitable use of 
their knowledge. The school is quite strict in its require- 
ments both at entrance and graduation, no girl being re- 
ceived who cannot pass a good examination in English, 
and diplomas being refused to those whose proficiency in 
the subjects taught has not come up to the standard. The 
school has grown very rapidly, and looks forward to a 
career of growing usefulness. 

The passage over from institutions of the character of 
those just described to efforts at educational improvement 
having their origin in the people themselves may well come 
through the People's Singing Classes, an institution hav- 
ing some of the better elements of both, but more of the lat- 
ter than the former. The impulse for the formation of 
this great union of working-people for the study of song 
came, indeed, not from the people, but from its present 
director, Mr. Frank Damrosch; and he and his assistants 
supply the necessary instruction without pecuniary com- 
pensation, but this not from the motive of charity, so much 
as out of a disinterested love of the musical art and a de- 
sire for its dissemination among the people. The people, 
on their side, pay the entire expenses of the movement, 
which has never received a contribution from anyone out- 
side of it, and undertake besides its entire management, 
electing its officers and committees, who gratuitously give 
in its service the time snatched from their working-hours. 
It may, therefore, be best described as a great co-partner- 
ship for the furtherance of a given end — the extension 
of the love and culture of music among the working- 
people ; a co-partnership to which each contributes what is 
his to give, and in which none feels himself the recipient 
of charity. Music is still the art to which the mass of man- 
kind is most strongly inclined, and when compared with 
the plastic arts — painting, sculpture and architecture — 
its appeal appears to be relatively stronger in the Jewish 
race than among other peoples. Certainly, some of the 



NEW YOEK 197 

most earnest and enthusiastic workers in the musical cause 
since the inception of the People's Singing Classes have 
come from the Russian Jewish population of the lower 
East Side. 

Among what may be called the native forces at work 
for the education of the Russian Jew a high place must 
be assigned to the socialist propaganda. The mind of 
many a young man, depressed by the soul-deadening con- 
ditions of a sweat-shop existence, would never have awak- 
ened to the higher life of the intellect in response to any 
stimulus less immediate and personal than that extended 
by the socialist theories of society. Clubs and classes in- 
numerable for the study of economics and history, science 
and literature, have grown up in the work of the socialist 
movement, and if the knowledge acquired was often one- 
sided, because studied in the shadow of a theory to which 
all the facts must be made to conform, still the ideal of a 
regenerated society was present to inspire other faculties 
than the intellect. Unfortunately for their cause, many 
of the older socialists adopted methods of propaganda 
modeled more upon German than American patterns, and 
this forfeited the sympathy of a young element that grew 
up in closer touch with American ideas. 

Anyone who Imows the East Side knows that it swarms 
with clubs almost as much as it swarms with sweat-shops 
and peddlers' carts. Some of them owe their origin to the 
schoolroom, to the settlement, or to the stray philanthro- 
pist who affords them " a local habitation and a name," 
but a vast host of them are of spontaneous generation, and 
constitute an expression of needs that are not the less gen- 
uine because sometimes unconscious. Boys' and girls' 
clubs are so numerous that lately the school authorities 
have been brought to see the wisdom of opening a limited 
number of school-buildings in the evening to serve as 
** play-centres" and to supply the want for club space. 
It is noticeable that nearly all of these open schools are 
on the lower East Side, the demand for them in other parts 
of the city being as yet comparatively small. The boys' 
clubs nearly all indulge in debates and have a ^' literary " 
programme, one of the elected officers being usually an 
" editor," who conducts a manuscript journal in which 
original matter may appear together with quotations from 
well-known writers, the whole being liberally seasoned 
with '' jokes." Much oratory and some juvenile eloquence 



198 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

is developed in the debates, and the effect of this upon the 
bright boys of the race is generally bad, since it is apt to 
start them upon careers of law and politics which, under 
prevailing conditions, tend rapidly to corrupt the truthful 
and scrupulous instincts of youth. Circles for quiet 
study are more rare, but these do exist, and excellent work 
of a public character such as that accomplished by Col. 
Waring 's Street-Cleaning Brigade, has been done by boys' 
clubs, but this usually under the direction of a leader from 
without. The little girls' clubs, while far more restricted 
in their interests than the boys', are subject to fewer 
temptations and under the influence of reading and quiet 
work, have been productive of much good to their mem- 
bers. At a later age, these clubs, both youths' and maid- 
ens' divide sharply into two classes, one of which is in- 
spired by an ideal of some abstract subject or of one con- 
nected with their particular trade or employment, the 
other by an ideal of pleasure with which is sometimes con- 
nected a charitable purpose. In clubs of the first class 
earnest work is often accomplished, though there is apt 
to come a time in the life of every such club when the per- 
sonal interests of its members, love and the starting of in- 
dividual careers, come to interrupt the course of its activ- 
ity. Among the older people, no clubs or associations for 
mutual improvement other than of a material order, as 
exemplified in the lodges and benevolent societies, exist. A 
league of young men 's clubs under the title of ' ' Federa- 
tion of East Side Clubs" has recently been formed for dis- 
cussion and action upon matters of common interest affect- 
ing the welfare of the neighborhood, and much good is to be 
anticipated from the existence of such a body. 

In the foregoing review of the educational influences at 
work among the Russian Jews of New York, nothing has 
been said of the libraries — Astor, Columbia, New York 
Free Circulating, and others — to which they have resort 
in so great numbers. If the place to speak of libraries is 
liot wholly that assigned to influences of self-help, it comes 
pretty close to being so. The library, indeed, is provided 
by others, but nothing can make it of service to the people 
if they do not themselves manifest the disposition to use 
it. This disposition is certainly present in a large pro- 
portion of the recent Jewish immigrants, even among 
many who are seriously hampered in the struggle for learn- 
ing by the economic conditions of their lives. It is this 



NEW YORK 199 

disposition, developed into an attitude habitual to them in 
the face of every opportunity with which they are brought 
into contact, joined to their natural ability, that will vin- 
dictate the claim of the Russian Jewish people to a high 
place among the intellectually-disposed nations of the 
earth. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

The observer of conditions in the lower section of the 
city is surprised by the remarkable intellectual interest of 
the Russian Jew. Accustomed to associate a low intel- 
lectual plane with a low economic plane, and to expect a 
lack of learning where there is a lack of the order and 
grace of the well-clad and the outwardly polished, he is 
surprised that amid the so-called *' slum " population 
there should be a people who have a high standard of 
ability, an intense desire to acquire knowledge, and great 
strength of purpose in carrying it out. To class this peo- 
ple as to educational ideals with the mass of low class 
American residents, the foreign immigrants, and the ne- 
groes among whom they live, is to misunderstand their 
history and their aspirations. 

It is the purpose of this study to examine the attitude 
of Russian Jews toward education as it is indicated in the 
institutions here, and to ascertain the effect which these 
institutions are having on their individual and social de- 
velopment. 

Probably no single agency has a more far-reaching edu- 
cational influence, especially in molding ideas in accord- 
ance with the standards of our country and our time, than 
the public school. It gives to the son of the inmiigrant 
the same advantages as to the son of the native born, and 
in many instances the transformation to similarity with 
the latter is swift and complete. 

One of the most striking features which the free educa- 
tional development of the country has helped to bring 
about is the difference in habit of mind between parent 
and child. The parents are usually too old, too set, and 
too depressed by economic conditions to acquire the Eng- 
lish language and to adapt themselves to the ways of the 
English-speaking people. But they give their children 
the opportunity; and these seize it with great eagerness 
and determination. 

The teachers of the schools in the lower section of the 

200 



PHILADELPHIA 201 

city, are, as a rule, so far as I have been able to gather, 
pleased, on the whole, with the Jewish pupils. They are 
impressed with their keenness and alertness, and regard 
them as better material than other pupils of foreign 
parentage or birth. The Jewish pupils come to school 
with the disadvantage of hearing a foreign tongue spoken 
in their homes. This disadvantage once overcome, they 
are abreast of the best American-born pupils. 

I visited a vacation school class in the southern section 
where the pupils were as neat, clean, and bright as could 
any where be found. There was no appearance of " slum- 
miness ' ' such as the up-town resident would look for. The 
principal of the school explained that as the vacation 
school was regarded as privileged, there being not room 
enough for all who applied, the parents took particular 
pains to have their children present a tidy appearance. 
The principal, for my benefit, asked all who were Jews to 
raise their hands. Up went the hands of nearly the whole 
class of youngsters, a showing which alike surprised the 
principal, the teacher, and me. In the other classes of the 
vacation school the attendance of Jewish pupils was also 
large and their general appearance attractive. 

Some of the teachers of the public schools take a strong 
personal interest in the pupils. Where the parents seem 
short-sighted they endeavor to influence them^ so that the 
children shall be kept at school with regularity and shall 
not be taken from school till they have completed the 
several grades. Where they observe special proficiency 
they try to have it developed. An instance of this is the 
sending of pupils to the Industrial Art School. They see 
much latent ability, which owing to the rush and push 
of our hurried life cannot be developed ; and its possessors 
are doomed to eke out a humdrum existence. 

In one of the poorest localities a principal informed me 
that the instances were rare in which the pupils of her 
school proceeded to the higher schools. Economic pres- 
sure apparently compelled the parents to take their chil- 
dren from the schools as they reached the higher grades. 

With the betterment of economic conditions among the 
Russian Jewish people, there has been a steady growth 
of attendance in the upper grades, the higher schools, and 
the professional institutions. Our high schools and col- 
leges are enrolling a remarkably large number of Rus- 
sian Jewish pupils, who show a high standard of scholar- 



202 



EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 



ship, of wliich. a notewortliy indication in the past few 
years has been the securing of prizes and honors. 

The following compilation made up of data furnished 
by the principals of the respective schools shows the total 
number of pupils and the proportion that are Jews, in the 
section bounded by Locust Street on the north, Moore 
Street on the south, the Delaware River on the east, and 
Nineteenth Street on the west, — a district comprising the 
greater portion of the Russian Jewish community of the 

■ city. 

'. The result shows that of a total of 21,485 pupils in the 
public schools of the described area, measuring about two 
square miles, 11,683, or 54.4 per cent., are Jews.^ 



' 








PER 








NO. 


CENT. 


SCHOOL 


LOCATION 


TOTAL 


JEWS 


JEW^S 


Locust Street 


12th and Locust Sts. 


175 


38 


22 


Horace Binney 


Spruce below 6th St. 


935 


700 


75 


Horace Binney Kindergarten 


Spruce below 6th St. 


34 


26 


76 


J. S. Ramsey 


Pine and Marvin Sts. 


408 


4 


1 


' U. S. Grant 


17th and Pine Sts. 


807 


24 


8 


Alice Lippincott 


19th below Pine St. 


500 


90 


18 


* George M. Wharton 


3rd below Pine St. 


1345 


1210 


90 


George M. Wharton Kinder- 










garten 


807 Lombard St. 


68 


66 


97 


James Forten 


6th above Lombard St. 


633 


576 


91 


James Forten Kindergarten 


502 S. Front St. 


38 


30 


79 


Ralston (Boys) 


American and Bainbridge Sts. 


197 


171 


87 


Ralston (Girls) 


American and Bainbridge Sts. 


220 


198 


90 


Kindergarten 


208 Bainbridge St. 


69 


65 


94 


Kindergarten 


705 S. 112th St. 


81 


18 


58 


Wm. M. Meredith 


5th and Fitzwater Sts. 


1011 


950 


95 


-James Campbell 
Fagen 


8th and Fitzwater Sts. 


1560 


782 


50 


12th and Fitzwater Sts. 


585 


285 


49 


Mt. Vernon 


Catharine above 8rd St. 


1200 


1070 


89 


, Beck 


Catharine above 6th St. 


301 


181 


60 


; Beck Kindergartens 


Catharine above 6th St. 


63 


30 


48 


Florence 


Catharine below 8th St. 


650 


325 


50 


Lyons 


Catharine above 10th St. 


840 


350 


42 


- Lyons Kindergarten 


Catharine above 10th St. 


41 


1 


2 


Fletcher 


Christian above Front St. 


958 


755 


79 


Kindergarten 


924 S. 9th St. 


120 






Geo. W. Nebinger 


6th and Carpenter Sts. 


1158 


671 


58 


\Vashington 


Carpenter above 9th St. 


1338 


30 


2 


Watson Kindergarten 


League below 2nd St. 


67 


54 


81 


Wharton 


5th St. below Wash'ton Av. 


1885 


1411 


74 


John Stockdale 


13th St. below Wash'ton Av. 


, 258 


17 


6 


John Stockdale Kindergarten 


13th and Alter Sts. 


30 


3 


10 


Weccacoe 


2nd and Reed Sts. 


603 


145 


24 


Henry Clay 


S. Howard above Reed St. 


356 


122 


34 


Henry Clay Kindergarten 


S. Howard above Reed St. 


70 


33 


47 


Tohn P. Baugh 


Dickinson above 6th St. 


797 


329 


41 


C. S. Close 


7th and Dickinson Sts. 


940 


460 


49 


Tasker 


9th and Tasker Sts. 


607 


200 


33 


Morris 


Morris below 2nd St. 


526 


44 


8 


Francis Read 


11th and Moore Sts. 


561 


179 


32 




31,485 11,683 





1 In 1899, of the total number of pupils, 17,000 in round figures, in practi- 
cally the same territory, about 7,500, or 15 per cent, were Jews. 



PHILADELPHIA 203 

One principal, in whose school nearly one half of the 
pupils were Jews, said: " A close study for years with 
these children enables me to make the statements from 
actual knowledge. Of all foreign children, the Jews are 
to be preferred as citizens of the future." The response 
to the specific queries was as follows on the part of this 
principal ; the questions being those put in each case where 
inquiry was made: 

Q. '' How do the Jewish pupils compare in scholarship 
with those of other nationalities? " 

A. '' Very much above all others in behavior, in apti- 
tude, and general deportment and scholarship." 

Q. ** Their interest in American institutions? " 

A. '* Great interest in anything patriotic." 

Q. '' Encouragement of parents toward education? " 

A. *' Most liberally encouraged and urged to become 
proficient. ' ' 

Another, in whose school a large majority of the pupils 
were Jews, wrote: " Only for the difficulty in learning 
English they would compare very favorably with Ameri- 
can children." 

A report from a school in which nine-tenths were Jews 
stated: " The parents attend our school exhibits in large 
numbers. ' ' 

In reference to a school in which half were Jews the 
statement w^as made that, '' They manifest a lively inter- 
est in American history and institutions; that the encour- 
agement of education by parents is ' active ' and that they 
are, with remarkably few exceptions, appreciative of ef- 
fort on the part of the teacher." 

The head of a school in which nearly all were Jews 
wrote: '* As a rule brighter and more studious than 
other nationalities. This is particularly noticeable when 
we compare them with the Italians." 

The comment of a principal, three-fourths of whose pu- 
pils were Jews, was: '' As a rule, the Jewish children 
are quick at figures. They are attentive to school work. 
So many, even of American birth, hear a foreign tongue 
spoken that the teaching of language is difficult." 

A kinder gartner of whose pupils all but three were Jews 
wrote : ' ' I have always considered them very bright and 
apt. They soon overcome the difficulty of the unknown 
tongue and make themselves understood. ' ' 

The replies were almost unanimous in agreeing that the 



201 EDUCA TWNAL INinA'hlNCES 

p;n-(Mits cneournc:o odncnlioii. Fi-oin Mk' loacluM's' stjind- 
poiiit, this moans that llioy take an inl.civsl. in tlio school 
record, attendance, and coiulnct of tlieii* chihlren. 

One of the mutters of complaint is the failnre of many 
parents to enforce the attendance of cliihlren on th(^ days 
preceding: holidays and the Sabbath. Evidently they are 
required at home to help "" clean up " previous to these 
special days, and both parents and children do not seem 
to realize the importance of conforminj]: to the school rou- 
tine when it comes into conflict with some of the set habits 
of the home. It is snj^'^ested that ])ar(Mits' meetinjjjs with 
the teachers would remedy this as well as some other mat- 
ters connected with school discipline. Hut tlu^ fact that 
many of the parents do not uiulei'stand Enjjjlish and most 
of the teachers know only that language, is an eifectual bar 
to the success of such meetings. 

The following observation of a pi-incipal should be con- 
sidered: ''They (the parents) e!icourage the boys, but 
less interest is shown in the girls. The latter leave at an 
earlier age." This is ({uite true and in accordance with 
ancient orthodox cnstom. It does not apply to Jews who 
have adopted the modern occidental ])oint of view. 

The children show a decided interest in American in- 
stitutions so far as the teachers have been able to observe. 
'^I'hey learn the patriotic songs and study the history and 
constitution of thi^ country with the same earnestness as 
other pupils, and have ;i general ch^sire to adapt themselves 
to the prevalent cust(mis and hahits. The rapidity of 
adaptation is in accordance with tlu^ cosmopolitanism of 
the Jew. 

The results, on the whole, seem to indicate that the 
Jewish pupils excel the other pupils with whom they are 
associated in the lower section of the city, namely, the 
negroes aiid those of foreign extraction, chiefly Italians, 
and that they are fully on an int(^llectual plan(^ with 
those of American extraction ; that tin; parents (Micourage 
education; and the children show an active interest in tlui 
country, and c()nse(|uently ])()ssess the initial elements for 
becoming intt'lligent, law-abiding citizens. 

In one school, where the children outside of the Jewish, 
were largely of American parentage, the Jewish pupils 
showed fully as high a standard of scholarship as the lat- 
ter. This was brought out by an (*xann nation of the aver- 
ages of boys in the higher grades. 



villi. MiKLriUA. 205 

The James Foi-Umi l^'JciiuMilnry Manual Training School, 
on Sixth SIrmM, alxu'c Ijonihard, was at one tinio lar}j:('ly at- 
Ivndcd by negroes. Now owv niniMy p(M' ('.(Mil. of tho 
])upils ai'c flews.' Then* is a, lar^e ne^ro po|>ulaiion in 
llio neighborhood of this school, which does not [)atroniz(^ 
it, wliereas tho Jewish popnhition has taken stronjj: ad- 
varitn^e of it. In fact, nieasnred by thi^ test of their 
nei«^hborhoods, tlie attendance of Jewisli ])npils at scliools 
is exceptionally larjjje. 

Then* is a. larii:e attendance of Jewish |)npils in s(*V(M'al 
of the nij^ht schools (h)wn-town. At t.lie William M. 
Meredith, Fii'Ui Street abovc^ Fitzwater, fully ninety per 
cent, of th(^ avera<;'e aitendaiice is of Jews. In tlie Mount 
Vernon, Catharine Street above Third, tlu* i)ercentaj]f(^ is 
ecpially larj»-e. 

It is not my purpose to discuss the cfKiciency of tho 
public ni^ht schools, in this connection, thou«;h a, careful 
investi^'atioii would, I feel confident, i-eveal nnich to criti- 
cise. It is certain, however, that the needs and demands 
of th(» forei<^n sp(»akin«^ ])opuIations are not adeipiatdy 
considered, when th(» fact is i)ointed out that, tlies(* schools 
are open but from October to Fei)ruai'y, three evenin<»*s 
of two liours each to the week, with adjourtunent durinj^ 
the Christmas liolidays. The foreign ])opulaiions, cer- 
tainly tlie flewisli, arc^ eai^er to learn, and the educational 
authority is actin*^ aj^ainst theii* best i?it;erests as citizens, 
in not j^ivin^' them a, mor(» adiMjuaie system of (education 
in tlie same s|)irit, as thai wliich is accoi'ded the i)upils in 
the day schools. It is because the re(juiremeids of th(^ 
])()pidati()ns are not sufliciiMdiy considered in ])ul)lic nij^ht 
school instruction tluit supplemental t(^acliin<2: in other in- 
stitutions is made necessary. In the district there are a 
number of public kindergartens havin<]: an attendance of 
Jewish children varying from two to nin(»ty-seven per cent, 
of th(^ total number of pu|)ils. In addition thei'e are a f(^w 
])rivate kindei-j^artens to b(^ considered, amon^ which ?jiay 
\)i\ mentioned thosc^ of the Younjjj Women's Union, the 

^ " The nationality of tlie pupils has changed in the last two yc:iis in a re- 
markable degree— instead of a majority of negroes, tlirrt' is now a prcpondrr- 
ancr of Russian Tews, who must he taught I'Jiglish before ihcy can enter the 
regular graded classes. And this adds to the re«piiretiicnts in the teachers. 
JCven in the class now under the eari; of the school, the well known character- 
istic of (he Jews, that of a carefidly guarded family life, is evident, so tliat th(' 
school has much belter »u|)i)ort from parents than heretofore, and consider.ible 
api)reciation of the beJiefils the children receive." Kcj'ort of tin' I'rcsidi-iil of 
the Board of liduaition (Samuel B. Hucy) for the year endini: neeendier 
P. 1st, 1K<)«. 



206 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

Home of J)eliglit, and the College Settlement (433 Chris- 
tian Street), in which nearly all the pupils are Jewish. In 
some respects, the kindergarten is more valuable to the 
child of foreign origin than to one whose parents are na- 
tive, for correct language, in accent and tone, can be 
taught, so that it will not have the disadvantage of some 
of the older children, whose English is spoilt at home in a 
way that is sometimes difficult to correct when they come 
to school. 

It has been shown that Eussian Jews attend the James 
Forten Elementary Manual Training School in large num- 
bers. Manual training is regarded as especially valuable 
for children who live in the densely populated districts 
and are thus thrown upon the streets. And it is of par- 
ticular worth for the Jewish people. The teacher of the 
Sloyd work in this school informed me that the Jewish 
pupils show full average proficiency, and he has not the 
failures in drawing to report which were reported in the 
regular schools. The mind and the hand work in har- 
mony, and the result is not only good finished products, 
but the formation of a finer finished product in the pupil 
himself.^ 

Among the Jewish institutions performing an important 
work in the educational development of the immigrant 
population is the Hebrew Education Society. In its 
building, Touro Hall, at Tenth and Carpenter Streets, 
there is a night school for English branches, in which 
hundreds are being taught our language. Such a school 
as this is especially valuable to the newly arriving for- ] 
eigners, w^ho, with their utter lack of knowledge of the 
language, would be helpless in most public night schools. 
Industrial education is pursued in the form of dressmaking, ' 
millinery, garment cutting, cigar making, and stenog- 
raphy. The reading room, the library, and the audi- 
torium for lectures and entertainments are valuable ad- 
juncts in the work of this institution. The auditorium,! 
which has a seating capacity for fully six hundred per-'' 
sons, is used by other organizations, without cost to them, 
for literary and social events. Free religious exercises on ^ 
New Year's Day and the Day of Atonement are held here 
under the auspices of the society. 

Also located in this building is the Manual Training 

^ See Speirs, The James Forten School, an experiment in social regeneration 
through elementary manual training. Civic Club, Philadelphia, 1901. 



PHI LA DELPHI A 20 / 

School conducted by the B'nai B'rith fraternity. Boys 
from eleven to sixteen years of age attend. The hours are 
arranged so that they will not conflict with those of the 
public schools. Some boys who have attended its classes 
are assisting in mechanical trades. The work of this 
school, though small, is important in helping, if ever so 
little, to turn the trend of development in the direction 
of manual trades and diversity of occupation. 

One of the large schools of the Hebrew Sunday School 
Society holds its sessions at Touro Hall, the others in the 
lower section of the city being located in rented halls at 
Eighth and South and Fourth and South Streets. The 
largest attendance in the three schools is about twenty-five 
hundred altogether. The pupils are taught chiefly Bible 
history. 

The Young Women's Union, at 428 Bainbridge Street, 
is an important centre of influence. It is developing in 
its personal work. Formerly devoting itself to the day 
nursery and shelter for young children and to classes con- 
ducted along institutional lines, it has been adding the club 
feature. The young people are formed into small groups, 
usually with a leader, whose personal contact with the club 
is valuable in molding the conduct and adapting the point 
of view of the individuals. Then, too, the Juvenile Aid 
Association, which takes charge of all matters pertaining 
to the delinquent young people within the age of those 
subject to the juvenile court law, has become a most val- 
uable feature of the Union's work. The probation officer 
who is given charge of all boys and girls brought up in 
the juvenile court is an appointee of this association. A 
part of the work of the association which promises good 
results is the placing out of young delinquents. To recur 
to the activities of the Union in its building, besides the 
clubs and the classes, the gymnasium and the library are 
adjuncts of its work. 

The Home of Delight, at 426 Pine Street, embraces a 
kindergarten, a library and reading room, game rooms, 
savings bank, classes and clubs. The class work includes 
sewing, embroidery, drawing and general elementary sub- 
jects. The Home serves as a centre of social activity for 
the people in the northern portion of our southern district. 
The matron lives in the house with her family. 

Among the influences particularly for the young people 
none has been more important in my judgment than the 



208 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

Philadelphia College Settlement, at 433 Christian Street. 
The beneficiaries are chiefly Jews. I have had occasion 
carefully to study and observe the work for seven years 
and I can testify to the valuable results which are accom- 
plished — not results, it is true, that can in any adequate 
degree be put down in tabulated statistical form, but 
which count for much in the uplifting of the individuals 
and the upbuilding of their characters. Not only is the 
personal contact of the residents and their associates with 
those who come to the settlement promotive of refinement 
and culture, but the educational value of the class and 
club work is of decided benefit, especially in broadening 
the point of view. The games and dances, the concerts 
and theatricals, the English instruction and discussions are 
effective means for promoting the finer development of the 
young people in the hands of the Settlement workers who 
endeavor to bring into their house an atmosphere of cheer 
and good breeding. The head worker of the Settlement, 
Miss Anna F. Davies, has prepared for me the following 
appreciation: '' My experience in the Philadelphia Col- 
lege Settlement has led me to believe that the Russian 
Jewish population furnishes the element of our congested 
districts which is most responsive to educational effort. 
This seems true of the wider education of a social type, 
the value of which the Settlement especially emphasizes, 
no less than of instruction pure and simple. Feeling and 
taste are sensitive, and where there is acquaintance with 
good standards, will usually and instinctively choose wise- 
ly. It is safe to assume that the Jewish applicant for club 
or class may be appealed to on the mental side; that he 
has a brain and will enjoy exercising it. To the teacher 
or club leader who has the tact to smooth away the ob- 
stacles of a slightly known language the returns in interest 
and appreciation are large and immediate. Students who 
cannot be trusted with the spelling of English monosylla- 
bles and whose composition is unintelligible except to a 
kindly intuition, have read Emerson and Shakespeare, 
under guidance, with keen interest. One such said on one 
occasion, ' That is grand, but if I'd try to read it at 
home I couldn't make out at all.' In the familiar phrase 
the Russian Jcav needs only ' half a chance.' That given 
he will do the rest. He does need greatly wider eco- 
nomic opportunities and the intercourse with the more 
privileged which will form, unconsciously to himself, a 



PHILADELPHIA 209 

finer type of social standards than his Russian past has 
developed. ' * 

Among the Russian Jewish people themselves the Hebrew 
Literature Society has developed. It has a house of its 
own at 310 Catharine Street. At its meetings discussions 
on religious, scientific, political, and social subjects are held. 
The lectures, usually on Sunday afternoons, are given by 
well qualified men from the universities and colleges, and 
the large audience which is attracted is thus afforded well 
digested information. There are also on other occasions 
addresses and discussions in Yiddish on Friday evenings. 
In addition to participation in debate, members may avail 
themselves of the library, which contains volumes in Eng- 
lish, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and German. In the dis- 
cussions the language employed is sometimes English, some- 
times Yiddish. The society promotes the social life by 
entertainments and dances. A gymnasium is contemplated 
and with it there is likely to be developed physical train- 
ing, both for the older and the younger generation. 

The Educational Alliance, located at 516 Spruce Street, 
is so called because it is the result of an amalgamation of 
the Educational League and the Hebrew Students' League. 
Its chief work, which was organized by the former in 1903, 
is free instruction to the immigrant in English, elementary 
and advanced arithmetic, algebra, history, and literature. 
The instruction is given four evenings each week, and the 
enrollment is over 200, with a nightly attendance of about 
100. This season (1904-05) a paid superintendent has been 
engaged. The main result of the direct co-operation of the 
Students' League has been the availability of its members 
as teachers, the Students' League having given up its own 
class work. It, however, retains its identity for social pur- 
poses and for the founding of a scholarship at the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. Its members are college students 
and graduates and higher school men. 

The Young Men's Hebrew Union is the outgrowth of a 
number of small literary societies. It is the most rep- 
resentative of the young people's societies whose members 
are imbued with American social and educational ideas. 
The character of its work can best be judged by reference 
to its debates, mock trials, lectures, amateur dramatic per- 
formances, entertainments, receptions and dances. Its 
Women's Auxiliary, which holds separate meetings, helps 



210 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

in the 'social work of the organization. Its rooms are at 
229 Pine Street. 

Literary societies come and go among the younger peo- 
ple. The names change, but many of the members are the 
same in a list of societies that may be made up at any time. 
These organizations are a valuable feature in the self -edu- 
cational efforts of the young people, and though they tend 
at times too much to mere dialectics, this is by no means a 
serious result compared with the good accomplished. 

We have, then, some large societies, besides a number 
of smaller ones, promoting the intellectual life among the 
Russian Jewish people themselves, as distinguished from 
the public schools, the settlements, and the educational so- 
cieties organized more or less from without. 

It would be valuable to have one of the branches of the 
public library in this district. There may not be a neigh- 
borhood spirit that understands how to call for it, but there 
is no question in my mind that once established the library 
would be most largely patronized. 

In connection with the subject under discussion it should 
be noted that a number of young people take advantage 
of the low tuition fees of the Drexel Institute and Temple 
College and are thus materially helped in their efforts to 
improve their education. 

No reference has been made here to the religious educa- 
tion of the young people because that has been amply 
treated in the chapter on the subject of religion. 

This review of the educational influences surrounding 
the Russian Jews of Philadelphia should be convincing 
evidence of the intellectual desire of the community and 
the intellectual stimulus which it is receiving — a desire 
and a stimulus which make for high class citizenship. 



(C) CHICAGO 

Endeavoring' to deal more directly with the educational 
work actually done for the Russian Jewish people by the 
public schools, the various settlements and private insti-, 
tutions, in and about the Ghetto, we shall, at the same time - 
try to make some analysis of this work as affected by Amer- :' 
ican Jewish conditions. I 

There are eight public schools which minister chiefly to^; 
the educational wants of the Jewish young people. Five! 
of these are situated in the very heart of the Jewish dis-J 
trict, with a proportion of Jewish children as high as 93 J 
per cent. The other three fairly mark the northern, west- ' 
ern and southern limits of the West Side, and have a pro- 
portion as low as 20 per cent. The names of these schools, 
together with the total number of pupils and proportion 
of Jews are, according to statements received from the 
principals, as follows: 

SCHOOL TOTAL JEWISH PUPILS PER CENT. 

Washburne 1575 1465 93 

Garfield 1525 1400 92 

Smythe 1225 1078 88 

Foster 2075 1640 80 

Goodrich 1200 786 65 

Medill (elementary) ... 837 335 40 

Dore 1093 328 30 

Polk 1250 250 20 

Jewish Training School 650 647 991/2 



Total 11430 7929 68.9 

Thus we find that in a total of 11,430 pupils, 7,929, or 
68.9 per cent., are Jewish. 

It must be remembered that it is not the fortune of every 
one of these eight thousand children to go uninterruptedly 
through all eight grades provided for by the public schools. 
Prof. Bamberger, of the Jewish Training School, in the 

211 



SEVENTH 


EIGHTH 


GRADE 


GRADE 


110 


48 


113 


73 


145 


65 



212 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

Tenth Annual Keport, asserts that the statistics in the 
school reports of the city of Chicago show that not over 
three per cent, of all pupils of the public schools are grad- 
uated, i e., pass through all eight grades. And when one 
comes to examine any group of schools he will find con- 
siderable confirmation of this statement. 

Of the eight schools mentioned, three, Foster, Polk, and 
Washburne, have no seventh and eighth grades at all. 
That there is a falling off even in the fifth and sixth grades 
is proved by the small number of pupils in the seventh 
and eighth grades in those schools where such grades are 
maintained. The following are figures for Goodrich, 
Smythe, and Garfield, as compiled by Miss Witkowsky, who 
investigated the subject -} 



SCHOOL TOTAL NO. 

Goodrich 1165 

Smythe 1183 

Garfield 1328 

Total 3676 368 186 

This table shows clearly that out of a total of 3,676, 368, 
or ten per cent., reach the seventh grade and only 186, or 
about five per cent., reach the eighth grade. 

What tends to aggravate these conditions, and further 
to interfere with the educational career of the Jew- 
ish child is, on the one hand, the apparently natural tru- 
ancy of some boys, and on the other, the necessity — always 
pressing on the workingmen 's children — of leaving school 
and going to work. This they do very soon after they reach 
the age of fourteen, thirteen, or even twelve. As many 
of them begin school at a late age, probably because they 
have come to this country within but a few years, one can 
judge what inadequate education these future workingmen 
take with them. Some of the principals feel this keenly, 
deploring the early removal from school, especially when it 
affects a boy who has already attained high scholarship. 

These are some of the undesirable features connected 
with the present status of education on the West Side. 
However, the outlook is exceedingly bright. When we 

1 Report of the Seventh Ward District Bttreau of Charities, 1897-1899, 
Chicago. 



CHICAGO 213 

remember that there are already eight large, fine school 
buildings, warm and comfortable, equipped with books and 
stationery, libraries and gymnasiums, ornamented with ap- 
propriate pictures ; when we remember that these are con- 
trolled by large faculties of teachers and earnest principals, 
many of whom have as their deepest interest the education 
and development of our children, studying and counteract- 
ing their drawbacks in English, and in physical health, in 
which many of them are so deplorably deficient, then 
gloomy thoughts vanish. When we remember that the 
ability and scholarship of this army of eight thousand 
children, fostered and encouraged in these schools, might 
have remained dormant, neglected or even stifled in the 
land they came from ; when we think that the interest and 
anxiety of the parents to see their children educated, — 
which is certainly satisfied here *to a large degree ; — we 
can readily realize the worth and success of the effort 
made to educate our Jewish young people on the West Side. 

Of the other schools in the city, with Jewish pupils, es- 
pecially of those on the Northwest Side, little or nothing 
can be said. There the problem of dealing with the Jewish 
children as such does not at all arise, so completely have 
they become an integral part of the neighborhood they live 
in. That this is actually the case is clearly corroborated 
by the reports of the principals of six Northwest Side 
schools. The principal of the Wells School, speaking of 
the scholarship of the Jewish children, says: " Have 
noticed no difference ; in fact, could not pick out the Jew- 
ish children from the others in appearance or scholarship. ' ' 
The principal of the Burr School says : ' ' Parents interested 
in schools and what is done for the children, but no more 
so than non- Jewish parents." This simply shows the proc- 
ess of Americanization that is going on, and an investiga- 
tion of the schools in other parts of the city would probably 
further emphasize the same fact. 

Side by side with the public school, and doing an educa- 
tional Avork which in essence is even more valuable to the 
Jewish children than the regular school instruction, is the 
Jewish Training School. This school was founded in 1888, 
in recognition of two great principles : First, that trading 
is too much a part of Jewish life ; that it is becoming detri- 
mental to its welfare in the present industrial age; that, 
therefore, trades must supplement trading. Secondly, 
that the three R's are too much a part of school life and 



214 . EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

the three 'H 's — the perfect union of heart, head and hand 
— not enough. As a result of these two basic principles, 
there stands to-day on Judd Street, between Jefferson and 
Clinton, a fine brick building, erected by the private effort 
of wealthy Jews of Chicago. The grades of instruction 
include a kindergarten, primary department, and grammar 
department. The manual w^ork is carried on in two divi- 
sions, the art and the mechanical. The art division com- 
prises modeling and free hand drawing, taught in all the 
classes, and designing, taught in the grammar classes only. 
The mechanical division comprises Sloyd, cardboard 
work, wood work, machine work, sewing, cutting, fitting, 
and draughting, and domestic economy. Particular em- 
phasis is laid on physical development, gymnastics being 
taught in all the classes. Music, too, is taught in the sev- 
eral grades. It is testified by many who have studied its 
progress and results, that, from the pedagogic standpoint, 
the school is successful. 

Still another factor subsidiary to the public school and 
influential in the educational and social development of our 
Russian Jewish children is the settlement kindergarten. 
The one at Hull House takes the lead. It contains 50 chil- 
dren, of whom a little over half are Jew^ish. 

The kindergarten in the Jewish settlement on Maxwell 
Street near Halsted has also done its share of good work 
for the Jewish child. The number of pupils is limited 
to 25. 

A settlement of comparatively recent origin, the Henry 
Booth House, is doing almost exclusively kindergarten 
work, and that mainly among our Jewish children. It is 
situated at 125 West Fourteenth Place and is under the 
direction of the Ethical Culture Society. 

The institutions so far described are undoubted^ work- 
ing for the highest good that is in the child. There is one 
other institution which must be dealt with in connection 
with the educational work done for children. This is the 
Talmud Torah, or Hebrew Free School. It occupies a large 
brick building only a dozen houses away from the Jewish 
Training School, on Judd Street near Clinton. The outside 
of this building is really attractive and in great contrast 
wdth the dilapidated shanties around it. This structure, 
together with an older one in the rear, is valued at $4,000. 
The seating capacity is barely 500. About 600 pupils at- 
tend the school, 200 aged from 4 to 6 years, during public 



CHICAGO 215 

school hours, and the other older children, from 6 to 13 
years of age, from 4 to 7.30 P. M. They are taught the 
Hebrew alphabet, reading, grammar, translation into Yid- 
dish of the Pentateuch, prophets and Hagiographa. 
Twelve teachers are employed. The annual income is about 
$15,000, contributed as follows: (1) Five cents weekly 
dues from all members; (2) ten to fifteen cents weekly for 
tuition unless parents are unable to pay; (3) contributions 
from congregations; (4) donations on various occasions, 
such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, b'rith milahs (ceremonies 
of circumcision), and the like. 

Subsidiary to the Talmud Torah, are the chedarim, or pri- 
vate Hebrew classes, which are to be found on almost every 
block of the Ghetto. The hours and subjects are about the 
same as at the Talmud Torah ; in some instances more mod- 
ern methods are employed, in others more mediaeval or an- 
cient, according to the progressiveness or backwardness of 
the individual teacher. The classes are invariably conduct- 
ed in the houses of the " rabbis " and usually number 
from 20 to 40 pupils. The children attend until they 
become bar mitzvah (thirteen years of age, the age accord- 
ing to the orthodox custom for admission of the child into 
the faith). 

Instruction is also given privately to younger children. 
A host of ' ' rabbis ' ' go the rounds early in the morning in 
order to help children *' zu sogen broche " (offer morning 
prayer). 

So much concerning elementary education. Turning 
now to secondary and higher education, we shall find the 
facts far more telling. All in all, there are perhaps 1,000 
Jewish boys and girls in the different secondary and high 
schools of the city, public and private. 

The two high schools of the West Side district are the 
Medill and the English High and Manual Training School. 
The total number of Jewish pupils in the Medill is about 
200, or one third. The number in the other is about 100, 
or about 10 per cent. This difference may be partly due 
to the location of these schools, the Medill being easily ac- 
cessible, while the Manual Training is far removed from 
the district. The fact that the former is of the regular 
type of American schools, offering an education which is 
essentially intellectual and literary, while the latter offers 
an education that involves manual training, may have some- 
thing to do with the difference. 



216 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

Aside from these two public high schools, there is also 
a private institution, for secondary or academic education, 
which is growing in popularity among the young men on 
the West Side. This is the Lewis Institute of Science, Lit- 
erature and Technology. There are about 60 Jewish pupils 
in this institute, most of them paying $60 a year for tuition. 
The intellectual work of some is particularly notable. Pro- 
fessor Carman thinks that the Jewish pupils represent the 
extremes, ' ' the best and the poorest. ' ' The selected 
courses of study are mainly literary, scientific and sociolog- 
ical, but not technological. On the other hand, the Ar- 
mour, a thorough-going institute of technology, is rather 
avoided by our Eussian Jewish boys. Here again the ques- 
tion of location might come in, but certainly cannot be the 
only one. As against those in the constructive sciences 
there are scores of young men in the medical and legal 
sciences. 

There are about 30 Russian Jews in the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, and 30 in the Rush Medical Col- 
lege. In the less prominent medical schools, like the Ben- 
net or the Harvey (a college having night sessions), many 
more are to be found. In the John Marshall Law School 
there are 10 Russian Jewish young men; while others are 
scattered among the different law schools of the city. The 
fact that the number of Russian Jewish young men in these 
schools exceeds that in 'the two institutions of technology 
furnishes further material for future analysis. 

More indicative of educational progress is the fact that 
many of our Jewish boys on the West Side are realizing 
that there is a LTniversity of Chicago in this city, and that 
it is not open to the boys on Michigan Avenue exclusively. 
Those in the department of literature predominate. It is 
not for me to speak of their success in the different 
branches. Several are here on scholarships, and they pro- 
ceed with their studies from one year to another in spite 
of many financial difficulties. 

It is difficult to tell how many West Side boys would 
gladly take advantage of the educational opportunities 
offered by the University if these difficulties were over- 
come. There is many a young man, sitting in a cold, lamp- 
lit bedroom on the West Side over a book on physics, study- 
ing perhaps the First Three Laws of Newton, which he 
would like to re-establish by actual experiment in the labor- 
atory, but is denied this privilege because he happens to 



CHICAGO 217 

be a poor workingman. Hoav many young men whose edu- 
cational careers have been cut short in Russia, whose 
identity in America is lost amid the numberless bundles of 
shirts or knee-pants in the factories of Chicago, — how many 
of these would joyfully occupy some of the vacant seats 
in the lecture halls in the university if the tuition fees, and 
the high living expense, were not so difficult to meet. 
Nevertheless, while the money question is serious with the 
majority, for the few opportunities are open in the Uni- 
versity, as well as in the Lewis Institute. The road may 
not be so easy, but with a little self-sacrifice, combined with 
the sympathy and help of others, it is possible for these to 
win a college or university education. 

Hull House can point to more than one young man and 
woman who have from year to year bettered their English, 
increased their knowledge of men and things, and im- 
proved their taste, receiving all in a natural, free and truly 
glad-to-give manner. Nor are they slow in taking advan- 
tage here. In general two-thirds of the membership of 
Hull House clubs and classes are Jewish young people. 
They predominate most in the classes in English, literature 
and social studies, and least in manual training, drawing 
and art studies. In fact, the English classes are at times 
composed entirely of Jews. The art classes are entirely 
non- Jewish in membership. Supplementing the work of 
these classes are the clubs, many of which are Jewish in 
membership. Their interest is chiefly in debating, in the 
reading and discussion of literature, in dramatics and 
musical and social entertainments. 

Very similar to these, though not quite so extensive, are 
the various clubs and classes at the Jewish settlement. The 
personal attention, help and guidance which these are re- 
ceiving may be judged from the fact that there are forty 
workers connected with the settlement, ten of whom are 
college-bred men and women. The subjects of special edu- 
cational value which are offered at the present time are : 
drawing, debating, handwork, weaving, clay-modeling, vio- 
lin, reading, and piano playing. 

As has been mentioned, the Booth House lays chief em- 
phasis on the kindergarten, which is much needed in the 
Henry Street neighborhood. There are, however, two dis- 
tinctly educational clubs besides those of a social or merry- 
making nature. The chief interest about these two clubs 
is that they are composed of working boys and girls and 



218 EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES 

are conducted by self-educated young men who have been, 
and in all probability will continue to be, workingmen 
themselves, who come directly out of the ranks of rising 
' ' Young Russia. ' ' 

Independent of the settlement or any other institution, 
yet widely influential in their respective spheres, are three 
Jewish educational societies, known as the Self Educational 
Club, the Lassalle Political and Educational Club, and the 
Hebrew Literary Association. It is here in the humble 
educational work of these clubs of coat operators, cloak 
operators and cigar makers that one gets the first glimpse 
of that ' ' ever-glorious revolt of toiling humanity ' ' against 
unrelieved sameness, and daily weary monotone of present- 
day factory life, '' against being shut up in one single 
chapter of life," as Miss Addams says. Yet I am afraid 
that the people who " go slumming " seldom discover these 
more essential elements and nobler manifestations of the 
Chicago Ghetto. How many know of the existence and the 
great needs of the Club House (of the Self Educational 
Club), the Labor Lyceum (of the Lassalle Club) and the 
Reading Room (of the Hebrew Literary Association) on the 
West Side ? 

Standing on the very edge of the educational map and 
perhaps as far remote from each other socially as are the 
north and south poles, are the numerous lodges, the chev- 
ras, classes for the study of the Talmud, and congrega- 
tions on the one hand; and the trade unions, the political 
and socialistic clubs on the other. What these institutions 
do educationally and socially for the uplifting of the 
masses can be seen, felt, and perhaps described, but not 
satisfactorily dealt with ; nor is it possible to show by means 
of figures the educational influence of a similar type of 
social forces located, figuratively speaking, just mid-way 
between the synagogue and the socialist headquarters, 
namely, the Jewish stage, the press, and the professions of 
medicine, law, and the like. It would unquestionably prove 
exceedingly interesting to examine the effect, for example, 
of the more thoroughly educated doctor on the particular 
neighborhood he lives in on the health and culture of the 
families he comes in contact with. But such a discussion 
is out of my domain. 

However inadequate the treatment may have been, the 
facts already presented are sufficient to indicate that there 
is in the limited district of the Chicago Ghetto a host of 



CHICAGO 219 

educational forces, emanating from widely different quar- 
ters, but blending to shape and mold anew the Jewish 
type of mind to suit the new standards and conditions and 
to produce those rapid changes which have aroused so much 
interest in recent studies of the East Side of New York 
and the Whitechapel of London. 

As a result of this education there is rising out of the 
ranks of the public schools a class of young men and women 
whose like is almost new to Jewish life. The note of mer- 
riment in the young American Israelite, foreign as it is to 
him, from the historic point of view, is certainly full of 
promise. There is no longer in him — especially in the 
better educated j^oung man — that extreme asceticism and 
sour-facedness which mark his Hebrew educated prototype, 
the yeshibah bochur (student of the Talmud). Tending to 
overshadow these typical characteristics there appear grad- 
ually on the face of the modern young man, " lines and 
angles of smiles," indicative of a more agreeable, if not so 
typical, a nature as that of the yeshibah bochur of Russia. 
The education of the school and the culture of the settle- 
ment tend to make the Jewish young man more of a social 
being; more varied in his likes and dislikes; more easily 
sharing the faults and virtues of German, American, and 
Irish young men. 

In the frequent large social or public gatherings on 
Friday evening in Turner Hall, for example, where boys 
and girls dance away until four o 'clock next morning, there 
is obviously just as much to be commended as there is to be 
condemned. The fact that the Jewish young people are 
outgrowing their self-centred natures and are learning to 
meet different people on a social plane is certainly of great 
significance. On the other hand, when this social tendency 
is carried too far, when the hour is unusually lengthened, 
the sobriety of the young men and the modesty of the young 
women must inevitably suffer. 

What proportion of these dancing clubs and parties con- 
sists of public and high-school graduates is difficult to tell. 
It is enough to say that they take a large share of interest 
in organizing and maintaining these operatic, dramatic and 
pleasure clubs, as they are so frequently called. It remains 
to be seen how soon they will organize a social settlement, 
a municipal voting league, an ethical culture society. 



VII 

AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL 
LIFE 



(A) NEW YOEK 
By a. H. Fbomenson 

Editor English Department Jewish Daily 'News, Neio York City 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

By Mrs. Simon N. (Charlotte Kimball) Patten, 

A.M. 

Former Headicorker Neighlorhood House, Louisville, Ky. 



(C) CHICAGO 
By I. K. Friedman 

Author of " Poor People," etc. 



221 



AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

{A) NEW YORK 

Although it may be accounted a negligible factor, yet the 
liquor saloon has some value in a study of the social life 
and amusements of the Russian Jew in New York City 
(and doubtless in the other large Jewish centres in the 
United States). Its relation to the topic is inverse; in 
other words as the Jewish population of a given district 
increases the number of " gin mills " decreases. Contrary 
to the advent of butcher-shops, grocery stores, and " coffee 
and cake parlors," the disappearance of a saloon from a 
street corner where it had seemed moored for all time to 
come, and where it had been located for a period beyond 
memory, has always, on the East Side, and latterly in the 
newer Ghettos of New York City, signaled the ousting from 
that district of its former denizens and their supplanting by 
a population between which and the saloon there is no 
affinity. Not that there are no liquor saloons in the Ghet- 
tos. The Russian Jew is not a teetotaler, but he has no 
need for the solicitous guardianship of a temperance organ- 
ization. He drinks when he feels so inclined, or when it 
seems to him the occasion warrants. But there must al- 
ways be some reason for his drinking; there is the " ge- 
fillte " fish on Sabbath eve and for Sabbath lunch. It is 
almost a desecration of the joy of the Sabbath not to have 
a little brandy before the fish-course, once with the course, 
and once after. Then there are the festal occasions, the 
** Rejoicing of the Law," the anniversary of the hanging of 
Haman, the celebration of the Maccabean victories and 
the miracle of the lights — surely, these are sufficient v/ar- 
rant for looking upon the wine when it is red, or tasting 
of strong drink. Then, too, the great family events: the 
b'rith milah (circumcision), the pidyon ha ben (a ceremony 
relating to the first-born), the bar mitzvah (thirteenth an- 
niversary of a male child), the tnoyim (engagement), the 
wedding — surely one cannot invite friends to these great 

222 



NEW YOBK 223 

functions without previously having a small keg of beer 
brought in ; people cannot sit at a dry table ! 

But the drinking that is done on any of these occasions 
is done in the house. The Russian Jew does not lean on 
the bar; nor does he sit around in the saloon. If he likes 
a glass of beer with his meals, he can have a bottled supply 
on hand. 

What saloons there are on the East Side do but an im- 
poverished business and are dependent to a large extent 
upon the chance passer-by or upon the steadily waning 
" kettle " trade. The brilliantly illuminated, lavishly 
decorated, expensively equipped saloons that may be seen 
in other sections of the city are unknown on the East Side. 
What brilliant illumination there is on the East Side, what 
lavish decoration, what rich furnishing, is in the restaur- 
ants, the latest response to the steadily growing social in- 
stinct and material development of the East Side. 

Instead of the saloon the " coffee and cake parlor," and 
from the " coffee and cake parlor," by a process of steady 
and marked evolution, the restaurant, with its nouveau art 
decorations, mission furniture, table d'hote, and string or- 
chestra ! Ten years ago it would have been impossible for 
even one of these restaurants, the acme of social life on the 
East Side, to have paid even running expenses ; to-day there 
are a half-dozen taxed to their utmost capacity daily and 
nightly, and more are preparing to m.ake a bid for the 
profitable approval of the East Side with brighter illumina- 
tions, gaudier trimmings, more a?sthetic furnishings than 
those which now ride on the golden crest of popularity. 
Five years ago the proposed establishment of a ''high 
class " restaurant on semi-philanthropic lines was hailed 
with the joy of anticipated gastronomic delight by the ap- 
parently limited number of young Russians and sons of 
Russians who yearned for '' better things." Now, the 
semi-philanthropic venture is not so popular, and its pat- 
ronage is not so typical of the elements that go to make up 
the East Side as some of those established by the people 
themselves. 

But though these high class restaurants have fitted them- 
selves into the daily life of the East Side, they have not 
done so at the expense of the humbler resorts of which they 
are the offspring. After all, it is in the " coffee saloon " 
— where many times more tea is consumed than the bever- 
age from which it takes its name — that the East Side 



224 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

finds recreation. Whether it is to play chess or checkers, 
or to discuss Karl Marx or Bakounine, or to analyze Tolstoi 
or Ibsen, or to debate the relative merits and demerits of 
the naturalistic or romantic drama — or the wonderful col- 
orature of the last night 's prima donna at the Metropolitan 
— (for all of these are included in the light converse of the 
East Side), or to denounce the critics of Adler, the actor, 
or to excoriate the traducers of Gordin, the playwright — 
these topics are handled best, thoughts come lucidly and 
words eloquently, over the glass of tea a la Busse — with 
a floating slice of lemon, and the cigarette. 

It is estimated that there are between 250 and 300 of 
these coffee and cake establishments on the lower East Side, 
which figure is the best proof of the popularity of these 
** workingmen's clubs." Unlike the occasional liquor sa- 
loon on the East Side, they are absolutely independent of 
transient trade. The chance passer-by does not enter into 
the calculations of the proprietor, and is stared at as an 
intruder by the regular habitues. We have called these 
places "workingmen's clubs." They answer that descrip- 
tion more truly and more pleasantly than the Bishop 's tav- 
ern, for here there is an absolute guarantee of sobriety, and 
a free, democratic foregathering of kindred spirits. If 
one is up in the coffee and cake geography of the district, 
he knows where he may find the social and intellectual di- 
version most to his liking. It is each to his own; the 
Socialist has his chosen headquarters, the chess-crank his, 
the music-lovei his, and so on right down the line. Some, 
indeed, combine two or three cults or fads, but even these 
have a tendenz which stands out clearly after the first clash 
of impressions. 

Two or three of these " clubs " have considerable life 
in the afternoon, especially those in which the radical 
literati and journalists, the compositors on the Yiddish 
dailies, and students and insurance agents and others who 
have a few hours of the day to kill congregate. But, for 
the most of them there is no life until late in the evening. 
It is generally ten o'clock before the social phase manifests 
itself ; if the ' ' popular price ' ' performance at the Metro- 
politan Opera House is a worthy one, or if there is some- 
thing worth while on the boards in the Yiddish theatre, it 
may even be later before the roll-call would have a full 
response in certain of these places. The resort of the chess- 
player is naturally quiet enough, but the philosophers and 



NEW YORK 225 

critics are oracular and demonstrative. Often it is '' mine 
host " who leads the discussion, or sits in judgment of the 
pros and cons. When he says his say, it is boldly, reckless- 
ly almost, viewed from the mercenary aspect of retaining 
his patronage. Nor does he fail to castigate a stubborn 
adherent of a contrary view. But the heat of controversy 
never assumes a petty, sulking character; to tear ''mine 
host's " arguments to tatters, to utterly rout him at every 
point, is no mean accomplishment and worth hazarding 
many defeats, for generally he is very well informed on the 
topic under discussion. In fact, it is his known views and 
predilections that decide the character of his patronage. 
Thus, if his establishment is frequented by Socialists, it is 
fair to assume that he belongs to that political school; if 
his clientele is made up largely of musicians, he is an ama- 
teur critic or patron of the liberal art. 

And where the cigarette smoke is thickest and denuncia- 
tion of the present forms of government loudest, there you 
find women ! One wishes he could write these women down 
gently. But to none would gentle words sound more 
strange than to the women of the radical coffee " parlor," 
who listen to strongest language, and loudest voices, nor 
fail to make themselves heard in the heat of the discussion. 
Yet it is hard to criticise them. The hall-bedroom is such 
a dingy, dreary place ; the walls so close they seem to crush 
the unfortunate whose '' home " is within its oppressive 
limits. The " coffee saloon " is light and cheerful; the 
noise is only the swelling chorus of spirits with whom they 
are in harmonious accord. If they are not the objects of 
fine courtesies and considerateness, they do not miss them; 
perhaps they never knew them. The stern realities of life, 
the terrible disappointment of thwarted ambition, the bruis- 
ing friction of tradition and '' emancipation," the struggle 
for existence, — all these have conspired to rob them of the 
finer attributes of womanhood. These are the stalwarts of 
the radical movements, the Amazons, or, as they have been 
dubbed, " die kaempf erinen, " whose zealotry rallies the 
flagging courage of their " genossen." Unromantic, per- 
haps, and yet we hear of them toiling, slaving, denying 
themselves until some man has won a degree and an entry 
into one of the professions. But, as they sit there in an 
atmosphere of tea-steam and cigarette smoke, one who does 
not know sees them only as unwomanly women; pallid, 
tired, thin-lipped, flat-chested and angular, wearing men's 



226 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

hats and shoes, without a hint of color or finery. And to 
them, as 'to the men, the time of night means nothing until 
way into the small hours. When one must sleep in a hall- 
bedroom there is no hurry about bedtime. 

Even when these radical resorts have reluctantly surren- 
dered their habitues, night life in the Ghetto is not at an 
end. There are still some resorts that are aglow with light 
and strident with color. The actor-folk and their admir- 
ers and satellites are still awake, talking " shop,'' posing, 
sneering, joking, romancing, fawning, and flattering, until 
the gray light of dawn paling the glowing incandescent ad- 
monishes them that sunrise, and therefore bedtime, is near 
at hand. The great " star " or the distinguished play- 
wright about whose table, as at an altar, sat the worshipful, 
gives the signal; the lesser lights, down to the chorister, 
know the meaning of that prodigious yawn — and night life 
in the Ghetto is at an end, — that is, the night life that is 
not lived behind the tight-drawn shades, to the melody of 
clicking ivory chips. But of this life this is not the place 
to speak. 

Theatre-going is so much a habit with the Russian Jew 
in New York City that at the moment of this writing three 
theatres are deriving large profits from catering to it. 
All of these theatres, with seating capacities equal to 
the largest patronized by the non- Jewish elements of the 
city's population (one built for the specific purpose of 
housing a Yiddish stock company) are located within five 
minutes ' walk of each other in the down-town Ghetto. An- 
other, in the newer, but rapidly growing and more prosper- 
ous Harlem Ghetto, has failed. There were five Yiddish 
theatres up to a very recent date, and there may be that 
number again shortly. It is estimated that the patrons of 
the Yiddish theatres number from five thousand to seven 
thousand a night, and as performances are given on each 
of the seven nights in the week, with two matinees (Satur- 
day and Sunday) the importance of the theatre as a source 
of amusement in the Ghetto may be realized. 

And because it has such an important place in the life 
of the Ghetto, it is all the more deplorable that the Yiddish 
stage is not a better institution than it has been permitted 
to become. What good may be said of the Yiddish theatre 
is not owing to those whose first duty it should be to make it 
possible to speak well of it ; rather, it is due to the people 



NEW YORK 227 

themselves, who have compelled the theatre-folk to show 
some little deference to popular taste. 

The players, with but few exceptions, are not educated 
and anything but artistic. Their mimetic powers are high- 
ly developed, undoubtedly, but most of them lack creative 
power. Naturally, they are at their best in photographic 
reproductions or in caricaturing types and characters with 
which their lives and environments have familiarized them. 
There is no desire here to deny to any of the leading men > 
and women of the Yiddish stage the credit that rightfully 
belongs to them. Indeed, it is perhaps the greatest tribute ' 
that can be paid to them when it is said that if they pos- i 
sessed that education which is a requisite for even a moder- :■ 
ate success on the American stage, they would by now have I 
been the greatest actors in the world, so wonderful are their . 
talents within their mental limitations. ^ 

Still another factor that tends to prevent the stage from ; 
rising is the discouragement of authorship. The Yiddish 
playwrights are few, because some of them, in combination 
with business managers and players, have conspired to limit 
the number. About eighteen years ago a Yiddish company 
was eking out a precarious existence by giving performances 
of the Goldfaden operettas in a converted " concert-hall " 
which had been renamed the " Oriental Theatre." Pos- 
sessing more business than literary ability, one ^' Profes- 
sor ' ' Hurwitz gathered about himself a number of Yiddish 
players who had drifted here from Europe, among them 
Moguelesco (perhaps the greatest of all Yiddish actors), 
Kessler, Feinman, and others. He started a rival theatre 
of which he became the manager and author. Except the 
Goldfaden plays, which were used as *' stop-gaps," none 
but the emanations of his pen, in the main clumsy imita- 
tions of the wholesome creations of the * ' father of the Yid- 
dish stage," were permitted to be heard in the playhouse 
of which he contrived to gain control. How many 
' ' plays ' ' he wrote no one can say ; not even Hurwitz him- 
self. Besides " historic " dramas and operas, he wrote 
* ' zeit-piesen " — " news melodramas ' ' they might be 
called. Hardly a sensation of the day, such as the Blood 
Accusation of Tisza Eslar (a full performance of which re- 
quired eight acts rendered in two evenings), the Dreyfus 
Case, the financial panic of 1892, the volcanic eruption on 
the Island of Martinique, went undramatized by his as- 
toundingly prolific pen. Twenty-four hours was sufficient 



228 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

time for him to conceive, write and stage. a play. The au- 
thors of the sensational American melodrama are rank 
amateurs by contrast with him. 

Another prolific playwright is Joseph Lateiner. Lately, 
however, his pen products have been few and far between, 
and for the most part unsuccessful. His plays, like those 
of the Goldfaden type, have musical settings. They differ 
from the Hurwitz productions in that they have sustained, 
coherent plots, which though as artificial as most stage pro- 
ductions, are yet not without a basis of verisimilitude and 
logical sequence of events and climax. 

It is worth while mentioning here that Sigmund Moguel- 
esco is responsible for most, and also for the best music of 
the Yiddish stage (except that written by Goldfaden). 
Much of it is original, some of it borrowed either from the 
compositions of the great chazanim (cantors) of Russia, or 
*' adapted " from the more popular Italian operas. But 
even these adaptations have been so altered in rhythm and 
tempo as to become almost characteristically " Yiddish." 

To-day Jacob Gordin is the dominant figure of the Yid- 
dish stage, and his impress is the strongest. Some others, 
among them Libin and Kobrin, have managed to get a 
hearing, and not without success, but they are disciples of 
Gordin, and at times have ventured farther than their 
master. Gordin has excellent literary skill and powers 
and, if he were tolerant of criticism and amenable to dis- 
cipline, could become the greatest factor in the development 
of the Yiddish stage. But it would be absurd to grant 
him all that he and his followers claim for him. Although 
he has written many plays which he probably regards as 
greater, his ' ' Yiddish King Lear ' ' must stand out indica- 
tive of his great possibilities if he had not chosen to become 
a philosopher and a problem play writer. What gives 
Gordin his greatest vogue, and what tends to confuse many 
of his zealotic followers, is his ability to write strong 
scenes. When at his best he has produced living, breath- 
ing entities, in contrast to the artificial, impossible creat- 
ures produced by his predecessors. His main faults are 
his stubbornly mistaken conception of " realism " and his 
persistent exposures of phases of life which are better left 
unrevealed. The concensus of opinion is that '* God, Man 
and Devil " is Gordin 's master-work. It is a combination 
of Job and Faust and its lesson is that even the most saint- 
like man may be tempted and fall. It has been witnessed 



NEW YORK 229 

and approved by college professors, and is unquestiona- 
bly a lasting contribution to the literature of the drama. 

Besides the playwrights already discussed, must be men- 
tioned Shaike witch (Schomer), a half-dozen of whose plays 
have won popular esteem; Seiffert, with a few good plays 
and several adaptations to his credit; Sharkansky, whose 
specialty is the dramatization of the High Festival liturgy 
(the names of two of his plays, '' Unsane Tokef " and 
" Kol Nidre," will serve as illustrations) ; and Sigmund 
Feinman, an actor with a fair education, who has been 
particularly fortunate in adaptations. Other of the Yid- 
dish actors, Kessler and Tomashefsky, have permitted their 
names to appear on the posters as co-authors, but their 
pretensions have been met with knowing smiles — there are 
some ' ' hack ' ' writers who want money, not fame. 

Jacob P. Adler, the nestor of the Yiddish stage, has 
been so much written of that it would be idle to say any- 
thing at length about him here. But very little has been 
written about David Kessler, who is the equal of Adler, 
and in a few roles his superior. 

Of the women of the Yiddish stage, it needs only be said 
that Bertha Kalisch is an actress of such rare ability that 
even so discriminating a critic as '' Alan Dale " has said 
of her that she is as good as Sarah Bernhardt at Sarah's 
best, but never as bad as Sarah at Sarah's worst. The 
others, with the possible exception of Mme. Dina Feinman 
and Mrs. Sarah Adler, count for very little indeed. 

Unwittingly, the people themselves have been factors in 
lowering the tone of the Yiddish stage by fostering the 
pernicious system of " benefits." At one time or another, 
lodges and societies of the East Side, of which there are a 
countless number, will ' ' buy a benefit ' ' ; that is, they will 
pay the management a certain sum of money, a little over 
half of the box-office receipts in the event of every seat 
being occupied; for this sum the benefit buyers are given 
tickets representing the extreme seating capacitj^ and stand- 
ing room of the theatre. A play is selected by the com- 
mittee representing the organization to be presented on the 
night of the benefit. The tickets are sold by the members 
of the society and every dollar received over the price paid 
to the management is the society's profit. This is no 
philanthropy on the part of the theatre managers; on the 
contrary, it is good business. The theatres may be reason- 
ably certain of ^' crowded houses " on Friday, Saturday 



230 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

and Sun'clay evenings and at the matinees on Saturday and 
Sunday afternoon, but the other nights of the week are not 
very lucrative. Without these '' benefits " the theatres 
would have to run the risk of financial straits. It may 
readily be seen how these '' benefits " could become a pow- 
erful weapon in the hands of the people, if properly 
directed. 

It is on the ^' benefit " nights that the Yiddish theatre 
is best worth visiting, provided the play is not the thing. 
The audience is made up of family parties and neighbor- 
groups; from the grandsire to the infant and the boarder 
the whole tenement house is there with its luncheons and 
its bedlam. Half of the audience has never been to the 
theatre before, and would not have been there now, only 
they could not " insult " by not buying tickets, or because 
it is a " mitzvah " (good deed) to contribute to the good 
cause for which this '* benefit " is given. And having 
earned the ' ' mitzvah ' ' why not partake of the earthly joy 
in its train? Here and there is the '' veteran " theatre- 
goer, who may be a member of the society, or also could 
not '^ insult " by refusing to buy a ticket, or also wanted 
the '^ mitzvah " and all that goes with it. The veteran 
may be easily discovered, the centre of a group of 
novitiates explaining the play, naming the actors, criticis- 
ing them audibly if they are lesser lights, telling where the 
laugh will come in and repeating lines lost in the noise. Al- 
together they are joyous occasions, these benefits. Presents 
are passed over the footlights to the ' ^ stars, ' ' the officers 
of the society strut out before the curtain between acts and 
make " sp itches," the member who sold the greatest num- 
ber of tickets has a gold-medal pinned on his palpitating 
bosom, and all bathe in a sea of ecstasy, with a feeling of 
good deeds well done, philanthropic purposes well served — • 
if the '' benefit " is a success. 

Although the Yiddish drama is decadent, there is no 
evidence of a similar degeneracy among the people. As al- 
ready pointed out, the value of plays like those written by 
Gordin and his disciples is due entirely to *' strong " 
scenes and powerful acting. Take these two attractions 
away, and the plays must fail, as many of them have. The 
social tendency of the people is constantly upward. Every 
sign-post in this period of transition points higher and 
higher. Their conceptions of life, of morals and ethics are 
expanding. Those who have worked among them for a con- 



NEW YORK 231 

siderable number of years see these signs clearly. It must 
be borne in mind that the population of the so-called Ghetto 
is increasing rapidly, and it is but natural that under the 
circumstances there should be added to it such individuals 
who are below the average of decency, or are forced down 
in the social scale by inability to cope with conditions. 
Hundreds of influences are at work in the Ghetto which 
make for higher ideas and chief among these is the natural 
inclination, or rather aspiration, of the Jew to live the 
higher, better life, in accordance with that ethical code 
which has been his guide through the centuries. 

The ladies of the Ghetto are never '' at home," but the 
welcome visitor is always sure of his glass of tea, his dish 
of preserves, and some fruit. There are no " Kaffee 
Klatches " here; nor progressive euchres, or bridge-whists. 
Hospitality is simple, homely, genuine. There are no so- 
cial circles, " social life " as that term is understood does 
not exist. ' ' Parties ' ' are given ; not ' ' coming out ' * 
parties, but ** engagement parties," '' graduation parties," 
' ' bar-mitzvah parties. ' ' The wedding, of course, is the big 
function. Hundreds of societies give dances and '^ recep- 
tions " (the latter being a more pretentious name for the 
former) during the winter, to which anyone may come if he 
can pay the price of a ticket and ' ' hat check. ' ' Some so- 
cieties couple entertainments with these receptions. The 
great social events are the ' ' entertainment and ball ' ' of the 
Beth Israel Hospital, the Hebrew Sheltering House and 
Home for the Aged, the Daughters of Jacob, the Young 
Men's Benevolent League, and the New Era Club. It is at 
these functions that the East Side makes its most gorgeous 
sartorial display, and it is by no means either a crude or 
cheap display. The women for the most part are as exqui- 
sitely clad as their sisters who visit the Horse-Show, and the 
diamonds worn at these affairs can be outblinked only by the 
collection on the grand tier at the Metropolitan Opera 
House. Strange as it may sound to many, the East Side is 
not all poverty and suffering. 

The Harlem contingent has acquired some ** society " 
manners, but like newly acquired things, these manners do 
not fit very snugly, and their wearing is very amusing. 
Perhaps, with much effort some of the social aspirants will 
become accustomed to the new burden. The ' * climbing ' ' is 
confined, for the most part, to the wives of physicians and 
lawyers and manufacturers. The great mass regards it all 



232 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

with quief derision, and will have nothing to do with '* vis- 
iting lists ' ' and the rest of what they call ' ^ blowing from 
themselves." With the mass, relatives and friends are to 
be visited when time allows, or when occasion demands. 

Owing to home-conditions on the East Side there is 
only such social life for the young folks as is made pos- 
sible by organization membership, and as may express itself 
in the dances mentioned above, or in * ' open-meetings, ' ' in- 
dulged in by the *' literary " societies, the Zionist societies, 
and the clubs in the settlements. In the summer time there 
are the picnics, which are dances in an open pavilion, with 
a few patches of grass surrounding it, all enclosed with a 
high fence. Much has been said against these ''picnics '* 
and it must be admitted that many of them are not very 
desirable. There is great need for healthy, wholesome 
recreation, for expression of the buoyancy of youth; and 
it is greatly to be regretted that the facilities for the things 
that help to make boys and girls better, purer men and 
women are so very few. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA^ 

Sharply contrasted with the middle aged, transplanted 
Russian Jews who accept even their pleasures sadly are the 
young immigrants, pioneers rather than refugees, and the 
native born, who seize eagerly on every social outlet offered 
by a niggardly environment. Unworn enthusiasms hurry 
them to tawdry American amusements while their fathers 
stand steadfastly by their old world observances. For 
of all the incoming peoples of European birth, the Russian 
Jew, after half a lifetime under religious and political 
ban, adjusts himself least easily to American forms. Flee- 
ing from his dread birthplace, where home and synagogue 
trembled in every political breeze, to a strange unstudied 
land, his attention is held by the one great and splendid 
fact that home and synagogue are here secure as long as 
he and his can bear their share of the burden of the day. 
The logical centre of his pleasures as well as his pains is, 
then, chevra (synagogue) and home. Not infrequently a 
social evening is opened for him and his old wigged wife by 
the wedding of the child of a Ghetto neighbor who was also 
his neighbor in a little Lithuanian village before a ukase 
depopulated it. And the funerals of friends, who through 
a long life endured many things in both the old world and 
the new, take him with increasing frequency from his books 
and business. 

There are, also, annual charity balls to which his ever 
ready generosity calls him and leaves him stranded, a 
quaint anachronism, an oriental patriarch awkwardly avoid- 
ing the rush of prize waltzes and Smoky Moke two-steps. 
Finally, he is a member of charitable lodges and beneficial 
associations, which hold semi-social dialectic business meet- 
ings. 

But of amusement pure and simple, of seeking pleasure 
and jollity for their own sweet sake, without the base of a 
ramifying religious impulse, the Russian Jew of the pass- 

^ The data for this paper were gathered chiefly in 1900 when the writer was 
a resident of the Philadelphia College Settlement. 

233 



234 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

ing generation has never learned. Body and mind have 
hungered and thirsted under conditions so wearisome that 
when ease comes he acquiesces to its circumstantial pleas- 
ures as an old person whose senses tire and dull, acquiesces 
to the fall of the cards in the palling game of life. 

Against the parti-colored background of our city life 
he is a somewhat lonely and pathetic figure, in a free land 
still an exile by inheritance, unwilling to adopt and unable 
to understand new ways of life and happiness, and in the 
new wa^^s the conduct of his own children most bewilders 
and alarms him; and his ignorance of English befogs his 
conjectures as to the meaning of their Americanisms. 
Their days he knows are long days, filled sometimes with 
the easy routine of school and oftener with hard work in 
tailor shop, department store or factory, — in any niche of 
our more or less ramshackle foundations of industry. But 
their nights are most certainly not spent as his are, in the 
study of the Word, or even by the quiet light of the home 
lamp. 

To the parents this is anxiety; to those who work for a 
more unified national life through the acquaintance of all 
the new elements of population with established manners 
and customs it is a hopeful sign. They find a richness of 
promise in the young Russian Jewish citizens, who, living 
under the severest economic pressure, in an environment 
which has received but a blurred impress from art and cul- 
ture, have yet preserved serene good temper and a dauntless 
spirit. Given such natures, already equipped with a strong 
mentality, the lever of civic machinery by which the mass 
may raise itself to a higher social and aesthetic plane is not 
hard to find or difficult to operate. 

Some civic educators express the opinion that the uplift 
of the whole can be accomplished by a general system of ex- 
tensive, organized, and endowed amusements, the pro- 
gramme which shall produce an ultimate art and cul- 
ture as the school programme endeavors to produce them. 

In the old world ostracism under which the Jew devel- 
oped circumscribed his pleasures until they were nearly co- 
incident, one may say, with the mental and moral activities 
which were intensely racial and aloof. 

What opportunities for amusement does Philadelphia 
offer? 

They are bounded by easy access to a few cheap theatres, 
many cheaper dance halls, and occasional rooms given over 



PHILADELPHIA 235 

by scattered regenerative agencies to higher social purposes. 
First in its formative influence is the theatre, after which 
comes that distinct class of pleasures clustering about the 
desolate dance hall : the Pleasure Social, the Hall Wedding, 
the Dancing Class, the Ball or Masquerade Dance for Char- 
ity, and the Literary Concert and Ball of the political and 
industrial bodies. About the last group are found debating, 
literary, and dramatic societies, dancing and social clubs, 
and Sunday school and philanthropic entertainments con- 
ducted by Jews of an up-town district. 

There were three play houses patronized by Russian 
Jews, and by comparing the policies of these houses with 
those of neighboring theatres not frequented by the Jews 
it is easy to determine the quality which attracts the Ghetto 
population. The least successful of the three was the the- 
atre on Arch Street, which was conducted as a Yiddish play 
house for a while, and the reason for this anomaly is 
due in part to its '' old fashioned " plays and to the fact 
that the language used was Judeo-German, a jargon Avhich 
the young people not only do not wish to remember but pre- 
tend they do not know. Many young men and women, 
whose weekly evenings at the theatre is as regular a func- 
tion as their wage payments, expressed surprise and amuse- 
ment when told that systematic visits had been paid to the 
Arch Street Theatre.^ They thought it all right for the 
*' green-horn," but probably a mistake in judgment on the 
part of those of us sufficiently acclimated to " know the 
ropes." '* That? Why ain't it a rank play? Something 
about Siberia, ain't it? Now, you ought to see ' The Elec- 
trician.' There's a great coon song in it; it goes this way 
* * * * * '' j£ -j-j^Q older Jews were threatre-going 
and amusement-seeking people, a house so centrally located, 
offering plays based on the most vivid realities of racial and 
religious life, would do a thriving business. 

The ' ' Standard, ' ' centrally located at Twelfth and South 
Streets, the business section of the Ghetto, presents a weekly 
bill with afternoon and evening performances. A stock 
company has occupied it for several years, and its members 
are neighborhood exemplars and household names. The 
personal and stage morals of each player are weighed and 
pronounced upon, from the virtues of the leading woman 
to the dramatic atrocities of the villain, whose private ca- 

1 The Academy of Music is now used occasionally for a Yiddish perform- 
ance. There is also an up-town Yiddish theatre of a lower grade. 



236 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

reer supposedly made a girl of fifteen remark: *'Not one 
of our crowd would be found dead walking the street with 
him. ' ' It is, however, the custom of her coterie to follow him 
on the other side, drawn by the attraction of a bad name. 

On the whole, the stock company does better work than 
might be expected from its weekly change of bill and its 
double daily performance. Old popular plays of five acts, 
supplemented by long entre-acte vaudeville turns, often ex- 
tend the matinee from two until six o'clock. " The Two 
Orphans," *' The Three Musketeers " and the greatest 
" charmer " of them all, " The Black Flag," are given 
yearly to large audiences which can anticipate the details 
of every act. More recently, melodramas of American life, 
" Hero, the "Warm Spring Indian Chief," '' M'liss," '' The 
Span of Life," and " The Fire Patrol," have been added 
to the repertoire and may be depended upon to furnish an 
appalling amount of misinformation concerning the man- 
ners and the customs of our country. But this failure to 
picture national characteristics is thrust into the back- 
ground when the cunning of the playwright stirs the crowd 
to accurate and vehement reactions on all moral issues. 

Ask the cynic and the doubter of his kind, he who has 
been saddened by the photographs of the seamy side of life 
shown by our first-rate theatres, to come to this theatre and 
buy a ten-cent seat beside the gallery loafers and unskilled 
working-boys. He will look down upon the floor crowded 
with young men and women, trouping in from nearby 
shops, markets and factories; clerks, and garment-workers 
of the upper class of industry, — who can pay thirty cents 
for an orchestra seat, and an additional dime for the wares 
of refreshment vendors. He will note that the majority of 
the audience are Judeo-Americans of the first generation, 
and that they jump to their feet, not like the sons of their 
fathers, but with a native nervous thrill when virtue is for 
the moment overborne by vice or when real flames envelop 
the heroine. If the hero demands the whereabouts of the 
concealed heroine some self -forgetful person in the audience 
tells him. Applause, hisses, groans, advice, are heaped upon 
the stage folk. Given this hearty interest in simple old 
tales of love and hate, it is not necessary to touch the coarse 
or the immoral. Only once during the period of personal 
attendance did a performer do a turn based on dubious 
anecdotes, and his was the only act that day that did not 
receive hearty applause. The vaudeville is often horse-play 



PHILADELPHIA 237 

and the songs are rank bathos and silliness murdered by 
ruined voices; the stage settings are drearily inadequate 
and the mechanisms creak; yet here an average number of 
eighteen hundred people daily run the gamut of human 
emotions and are molded by the deportment of the players. 

We are proud of the marked compliment paid us by the 
management, whose playhouse in another part of the city 
is wholly vicious, in thus recognizing the sound morale in 
our district. 

The '' National " attracts a different patronage. It is 
ten squares north of the Standard, at Callowhill and Tenth 
Streets and outside of the geographical bounds occupied by 
the Russian Jews. Prices of admission range from 75 to 
15 cents, and the plays are given by second rate and third 
rate road companies. Scenery and property are richer 
than they are at the Standard, and the place is sensational 
but not spectacular. There is little glare, glitter, or fan- 
fare, but an abundance of the heavily tragic relieved by 
series of the lightly comic. ' ' The Man of Mystery ' ' and 
'' The Great Train Robbery " enjoyed long runs this sea- 
son, and the *' Acrobatic Farce " of " Eight Bells," with 
its tumbling fooleries, crowded the house to suffocation. 
A large share of its patronage is drawn from the down- 
town shop-keepers whose social aspirations point north- 
ward, warning them not to mingle with the democratic 
throngs at the Standard; from grammar and high school 
pupils; from the higher ranks of labor — the men who 
belong to unions and read the literature of their craft; 
and from the over-running swarms of boys who know 
every coign of fun from Kensington to Point Breeze. 
Traditions of intellectuality propelling this mass were re- 
vealed when the Jewish play *' Zorah " was given here. 
By the low murmurs of sympathy and applause which 
greeted incidents of Russian autocracy, of hasty flight, of 
stern execution, persecution of the Jewish professional 
class, religious meekness and filial devotion, one knew that 
many of the audience criticised the verities at first hand. 
Threats of Siberian torture had sounded before, under 
different circumstances, in the ears of university-bred and 
professionally trained fathers of these auditors. It is an 
oversight on the part of our society that mental pabulum 
is not offered instead of the froth with which this strong 
body is fain to satisfy itself. 

The Pleasure Social and its causes measure the lack of 



238 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

any adequate outlet for hospitable impulse and a gracious 
well-mannered expression of it. The Jew is instinctively 
hospitable and the quality enters into and complicates his 
confused attempt to solve the social problem of his life. 
He greatly desires to be entertained, to entertain, and to 
adjust to his persistent money stringency the degree of 
excitation made necessary by his early indulgence in highly 
spiced amusements. 

His own home cannot meet his requirements in this di- 
rection. The rooms are seldom large enough to accommo- 
date a number of his friends and the custom of inviting 
one or two of them to dine with him is almost unknown. 
Indeed, the formal sitting down to food is not usual enough 
to make a social function of the act. There is in general 
but one small, poorly lighted room, common in the evening 
to the old people and the children, so that the sense of 
something different and brighter and dressed up is alto- 
gether missing. From these conditions has developed the 
Pleasure Social, which after Hall Weddings is the most fre- 
quent form of social intercourse. 

There are three distinct kinds of social. The first, as 
the name implies, is a friendly group of a dozen or more 
young men combined for pleasure with the sub-motive of 
pecuniary profit; the second is a business association of 
three or more men giving dances under club names for 
profit alone ; and lastly the ' ' chartered social, ' ' a gambling 
concern masquerading as *' The Early Rose," " The Jolly 
Fifteen," " The Jolly Bunch," or the '' Ad Libitum." In 
order to rent a room where cards may be played regularly 
and without interruption it is necessary to hold a charter, 
and, by suggestion, clubs taking a charter may not be in 
good repute. Therefore, pleasure-seeking young people 
hesitate to do so even though it would be a step toward a 
more permanent organization than they usually succeed in 
maintaining without an assured meeting place. The lead- 
ing spirits weigh the prospects, drop in to talk it over with 
the girls, canvass it with members of last winter's de- 
funct clubs, and at length choose a name and elect officers. 
After a few weeks, if wages are good, they may hire a 
small, cheap, dirty hall. Each member invites a '' lady 
friend," and they give a tentative private '' spiel." How- 
ever successful it may be it does not establish the Social. 
For if it rests its claim to recognition at this point, scoffers 
will say of it, * * Them ? nothin ' but cheap lovers ! " So an 



PHILADELPHIA 239 

elaborate affair is projected by generalship and daring, at 
a date when the market does not seem to be overcrowded 
with big public balls. It is called to the attention of pleas- 
ure seekers by window placards, reading like this : 

ROUDIOS SOCIAL 

December 2nd 

Kilgallon, America's White Champion CAKE WALKER 

Last Chance to see him prior to him going to NEW YORK 

PRIZE WALTZ for up-towners and down-towners 

GREAT SPORT 

Ad. 15 cents. Pennsylvania Hall 

Sometimes a swell Social, a very aristocrat distinguished 
among its fellows because it is three or four years old, pays 
its heaviest expenses by the advertisements on its dance 
programmes. When the financial strain is thus relieved be- 
fore the day arrives the occasion is a gala one, and the 
promoters exercise a simpler hospitality than is possible 
when it is necessary that strangers buy beer to pay for the 
orchestra. The larger halls, Pennsylvania or Washington, 
may be rented for $25.00 ; the orchestra hired for $12.00 or 
$15.00 ; and the bar stocked with multiple kegs of beer and 
bottles of soda, whiskey, wine, according to taste. To these 
expenses add the printing of window placards and a large 
number of tickets, prizes for cake walk and waltz, and it is 
evident that the expenditure is large and that possible loss 
may be heavy. 

The assertion upon the tickets that admission will be 
fifteen cents is usually no more than current fiction, for 
the cards are distributed as advertisements, the profits 
being reckoned by the ward-robe fee levied upon all comers, 
and by the returns from the bar. A movement toward 
higher prices is noted. It is possibly a desire to raise a 
barrier against the chance entrance of any passer-by. At 
any rate the members now give complimentary tickets in 
numbers to their acquaintances, whereas the total stranger 
is confronted with the admission fee of fifteen cents plus 
ten cents " ward-robe." 

If this process of selection is more than a season's fash- 
ion it will in a measure arrest the worst tendency of the 
Social — the unchecked publicity which kills the sense of 



240 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

personai responsibility in living np to any defined stand- 
ards of behavior. On the other hand, if the Social's ball 
advances on its present lines a few years longer, the condi- 
tions it is creating by its entire lack of supervision by ma- 
ture and steady people, its indiscriminate contact with 
some vicious phases of our city life and — if the adjective 
is not too far fetched — by a touch of the French in masque 
dancing, all these will set a problem before the Jews which 
in the guarded Russian days they have been blessed in 
escaping. 

In illustration of the occasional use of this freedom sud- 
denly thrust upon young people strictly reared by parents 
and rabbis, one incident may serve. At a much heralded 
Fifth Annual Ball given by a Social whose boast it is that 
it has always barred the " hoboes " from its functions by 
high admission prices and that it never admits a " lob- 
ster " to membership, the president, a nineteen-year-old 
cutter in a fashionable tailor-shop, shook hands with his 
incoming acquaintances with a somewhat unusual manner 
of kindly interest. '* I hope youse will entjoy the even- 
ing " was his formal welcome. Perhaps he had been 
drinking before he came, perhaps not, but half an hour 
later, dazed and wandering, he approached a guest and 
her escort and quavered, " If youse want a good time 
why don't you go to the bar, boy?" He continued in this 
state, drinking with his " lady-friend " who, according 
to custom, ordered soda, until the girl decided to take 
him away. She was unwilling to expose him to the wrath 
of his people and guided him along the streets to her own 
home at four o'clock in the morning. Her parents shel- 
tered him there until he was sober enough to take care of 
himself. 

The occurrence is not usual, but it was not adversely 
criticised by the circle which heard of it. Some of the 
comments summed it up as a good joke on him and a bit 
of luck that the girl had a " good head on her." 

Although the inducement to drink is always present, 
noticeable drunkenness is seldom seen. The racial tem- 
perateness bred by a stern environment has not yet been 
appreciably encroached upon by a laxer habit of life. 
Flushed faces, restless eyes, and stumbling sibilants are 
chiefly indicative of the frequent treats; even in the small 
hours the large majority is no more than merry. In the 
early part of the evening it seems scarcely that. First im- 



PTIILADELPIIIA 241 

pressions are indeed dispiriting*. The room is cold, half 
filled, and every sound echoes from its unclean, barren 
walls. There is a little desultory music which does not 
affect the young men huddled on one row of benches or 
the young women opposite on another. Spirits are appar- 
ently at a low ebb. Suddenly the big drum booms, the 
fiddle squalls horribly with every vocal cord, the clario- 
net playfully caterwauls, the piano emits fearful jangles, 
people jump into the air, electrified by this orchestral 
joke, and the dance begins. It moves easily without other 
diversions until midnight, when a Grand Prize Cake Walk 
is announced and babies of four years, with other contest- 
ants ranging to twenty-five years, gather at one end of the 
room. 

They are fantastically and hideously dressed, the little 
girls in short fluffy skirts, soiled fancy shoes and stock- 
ings, hair floating or strangely coiffured, necks and arms 
bare, and prize medals won at cake walks of other socials, 
proudly decorating their little chests. The young men 
appear as darkies, Uncle Sam or vaudeville tramps, 
their faces grotesquely painted with ugly daubs. Pair by 
pair they go down the lines of clapping spectators, through 
the contortions of the cake walk. A child of ten years may 
dance with a young man of thirty. Many couples are, in 
fact, semi-professional walkers who go from one hall to 
another, competing for prizes. Such rounds are more fre-" 
quently made by Italians and ' ' Americans ' ' than by 
Jews. The performance itself is a vulgar and debasing 
exhibition rapidly becoming worse. Its tendencies are 
vicious, and although the majority of onlookers, familiar 
with its easy descent, evidently enjoy it, yet expostulatory 
murmurs are heard here and there. 

After the customary " walk," general dancing con- 
tinues an hour or two, when the Prize Waltz, either double 
or single or both, is announced. Correct form, conven- 
tional steps, are not winning methods, but novelties are. 
The girl who can whirl pivot-like an incredible number of 
times is the " champeen. " Others who undulate with 
fewest points of contact with the floor also take prizes. 

When the ball is a masquerade the fun naturally 
marches a little faster. More prizes are offered and '' the 
most amusing, the most character, the most beautiful " 
and so on, being individually rewarded, makes it worth 
while for a minority to spend time and money on cos- 



242 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

tumes. • Fifty maskers among four hundred non-maskers 
can change the entire atmosphere of a night. To 
schottische against a clown walking across the dancing 
space upon his hands, to dash him prone, to be pursued 
by him in gesticulating vengeance, to have your lancers 
set stampeded by a pair of Polish peasants, cracking their 
long whips about your ears and threatening you in an in- 
comprehensible tongue, — this makes all hail fellows very 
well met. 

It is a picture tinted with an old world, continental 
tone, but emphatically there is among the Jews themselves 
no indecormn, no ever-present conscious principle of evil 
in the fun, which is but a coarser expression of the buf- 
foonery that sometimes animates the New England husking 
bee. Judaism and Puritanism both are faithful watch- 
dogs. But it is a certainty that the principle of evil is 
just at the door. On one Halloween, masked parties made 
the tour of public halls and after midnight began to ar- 
rive at a Jewish Pleasure Social Ball. One party not 
masked consisted of a number of women who came in 
quietly. They looked like American sales girls and were 
unobstrusively dressed in silk shirt waists and dark skirts. 
But they were slightly rouged, their eyes were darkened, 
and upon them was the indefinable stamp of the street. 
They ordered beer and fell into casual talk with young men 
at the same table. In pairs they joined the dancers and 
carelessly mingled with the Jewish maidens of the set. 
They were invited to dance as often as was anybody else 
and, since an introduction to a partner is not a necessary 
preliminary, there are no checks placed by custom upon 
the number of acquaintances these women of a separate 
world can make in a single evening. This is but one of 
many indications that the younger American generation 
of Jews has neither the social desire nor the religious 
scruple to keep itself to itself v/hich has been the basic 
principle with its Russian born parents. 

The distinction between the ball given by the genuine 
Pleasure Social and the business ball of the pseudo-social 
is entirely economic. The business ball tends to manifest 
itself as an incipient trust, borrowing somewhat from the 
better developed corporate creature in the field of more 
material necessities and yet not restrained by standards of 
living or of aesthetic tastes. An analogy of the Business 
Social may exist in the middle man who arranges for his 



PHILADELPHIA 243 

employer the entertainments at a summer resort. The lat- 
ter, however, acts upon instructions, whereas the man- 
ager of the Business Social receives no orders from 
society. He offers what he will and pockets the returns. 
If " the push " enjoys cake walks, he invites us to one 
gayer than that of last week; if we want a masquerade he 
advertises the article with more prizes, more promenades, 
more specialties, and cheaper drinks than the less skilled 
promoter dares to promise. He is the '' soulless corpora- 
tion " entity, and his influence is felt. 

The third class, the '' Chartered Social," as a gambling 
club meeting behind closed doors in an unsocial fashion, 
is outside the legitimate fields of fun. It thrives on the 
gambling trait in the Jewish character, and manifests it- 
self in raffles, lotteries, policy playing, and that elaborate 
underground system in chance which is a symptom of 
social disorder. 

Hall Weddings outnumber the Social Balls nearly ten 
to one. The ancient Mosaic customs, the ceremonial dance, 
the tearful kissing, the cries of mazel tov (good luck), sug- 
gest permanence, privacy, affairs between friends, and 
family celebrations. But the impression is false and 
springs from the fact that the world-loved lover is here 
the centre of things, and belongs to the jovial stranger 
within the gates as well as to the numerically insignificant 
circle of personal acquaintances. To join a wedding party 
it sometimes costs nothing at all, sometimes ten cents, 
which is a low price to pay for the combined pleasures of 
a dance, a pageant, and a feast. None is denied admission. 
Neither the work-grimed boy, who, seeking what he may 
devour, drops in on his way home from his daily grind, is 
questioned, nor the society stranger who wears a cellu- 
loid, perhaps a linen collar, and also frankly exploits the 
occasion. 

The bride and groom, reckoning upon scores of sueli 
guests among the hundreds of friends' friends formally 
invited by card, often spend literally their last cent upon 
their entertainment. Yet it is cheerfully offered as a sac- 
rifice to fate and enjoyed as an augury of future pros- 
perity. Not long ago at the wedding of a daughter of a 
family desperately poor, the various sources of supply 
were drained to the bottom. The newly-made husband 
and wife were bankrupt, but every guest was fed with 
chicken, potatoes, bread, fruit and cake, nor were the beer 



244 AIWSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

and whiskey allowed to ebb. Tlie pair was radiant and 
3^et — To-morrow loomed from tlie wreckage on the tables. 
The groom looked at his bride : ' ' Well, girl, we got mar- 
ried on our nerve." She smiled and murmured, ** Yes, 
something fierce, ain 't it ? " 

A synagogue ceremony increases the wedding expenses 
so heavily that the number of such ceremonies is falling 
off year by year. It is also necessary to approximate 
punctuality, an unlovely condition guests do not like 
to face. If a synagogue service is dated for six o'clock it 
must take place between that hour and eight when the 
wedding-party is expected at the Hall to receive its guests. 
The Hall wedding invitation announces that the wedding 
ceremony will take place at six. An hour later carriages 
call for the nearest friends of the pair and then proceed 
to the groom's home. Thence in procession they go for the 
bride and escort her to the ball. There in front of a 
stage upon a raised platform painted with the immemorial 
sacred insignia of the Hebrew faith and punctuated with 
red, white and blue electric lights, the pair receive their 
friends. Women cry, men kiss each other and the bridal 
couple wait restive until the hall is full, frightened when 
it is, since this is an indication that the ceremony will 
soon take place. When the last stragglers presumably 
have arrived between ten and eleven o'clock, a large plat- 
form surmounted by the chuppah (marriage canopy) is 
pushed into the middle of the floor. Willing hands are 
laid upon it, for whoever pushes is '' forgiven many sins." 

The orchestra plays the latest two-step and the groom, 
followed by ten friends holding candles aloft, slowly goes 
to meet his bride. Half solemn, half laughing, the bridal 
party marches under the canopy. The rabbi lifts his voice 
in the strange wail of the ritual. The onlookers laugh and 
whisper, and some old man beside the groom flashes his 
sombre eyes upon the offenders. He lifts his candle and 
peers at them. *' Be silent there," he cries. 

The music begins again and frivoling couples, under its 
influence, break from the mass and dance enthusiastically 
over the cleared space. When the glass is broken and the 
wine is drunk, the bridal party is kissed all around amid 
cries of " good luck " and the music of shear (a Bulgarian 
quadrille). All the guests form the v/edding march round 
and round the hall, which terminates in the move toward 
the supper room. On the moment, the leisurely progress 



PHILADELPHIA 245 

waxes without disguise into a rush for place and the feast 
becomes a plunge for food. Instantly the food disappears 
from the plates, the bottled beer is seized, a dozen forks 
dive into the scattered platters of fish or chicken or potato, 
and supper is over in a twinkling. Healths are drunk, con- 
gratulatory telegrams are read (fakes, say the critics), 
and the wedded pair is taken to the rabbi's corner for a 
last word of blessing. 

The guests dance till four o'clock, — strange old world 
dances to tuneless music; peasant dances from Roumania, 
Austria and Eussia; competitive dances between men, 
circling dances of women whirling, laughing and embrac- 
ing each other. It is greatly enjoyed by all except the 
bride, who is often desperately tired and ill after her 
twenty-four hours' fast. But etiquette demands that she 
remain until the fun is abandoned, and she bravely keeps 
at her post. She goes at length to her new home and an- 
other day finds her going to market while her husband is 
at w^ork again in the old place in shop or factory. 

The ' ' Dancing Class ' ' usually meets in a second story 
room over a shop or in a tenement. It is conducted by a 
man or men who may know how to dance but who do not 
know how to teach. There is evidently no appreciation of 
the value of etiquette and convention as supplements of 
the waltz step. The '' class " does as it pleases and at- 
tends the '' benefits " which the teacher gives his " col- 
league " and those which the *' colleague " gratefully ar- 
ranges for the teacher. The attendance on class nights, 
Friday by choice, is not very large, but there are many 
classes in the entire district. The same young people may 
be found in the same place night after night dancing for 
the entire evening with the same partner. In the course 
of time these partners develop specialties of their own 
which, when carried to a certain degree of perfection, pro- 
mote them as prize waltzers at public balls or to the rank 
of cake walkers. The class may be mixed in its nationali- 
ties. Jews, Italians, Irish, and " Americans " meet ami- 
ably, waiving all differences of race and religion but cling- 
ing to personal differences in step and bearing. 

In the amusements developed by industrial and political 
parties and literary and charitable societies, there is at 
length accented that intellectual quality, that spontaneous 
mental activity of the Russian Jewish mind, which reveals 
to the observation the scholar garbed as the factory hand. 



246 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

Here is higher thinking, frequently yoked with plainer 
living than that known to the theatre-going Pleasure So- 
cial population. The distinction is not that named the eco- 
nomic '' standard of living " which falls into the molds 
cast by the student of sociology, but rather that strong and 
intangible distinction between those individuals who spirit- 
ually aspire and those who do not. 

In fact, the pressure of material wants seems to bear 
more heavily upon these mentally active thousands than it 
does upon their fellows living upon the same economic 
plane. The latter spend the larger share of their wages 
upon personal decorations, the former upon the acquire- 
ment of invisible goods. They would rather engage_ a 
party leader to speak to them than to attract patrons with 
the glare of a hired band. They choose to pay the travel- 
ing expenses of an out-of-town '' Yiddishe " poet rather 
than to put the money into the treasurer's hands whence 
it ultimately converts itself into neckties and cigars. In 
practice, the dancing half of ''Concert and Ball " or 
" Speeches and Ball " is tacitly postponed until the long 
programme has been enjoyed to its final midnight number. 
Literary and charitable societies incline to addresses, reci- 
tations, songs, and piano and violin music, and legerde- 
main. The programmes of the two great parties, Social La- 
bor and Social Democratic, are made of the sterner stuff 
of political and industrial agitation; the charitable and 
literary societies view our situation as less acutely serious, 
and arrange their material Avithout propaganda. If the 
material is original with the person who presents it so 
much more does the audience enjoy it. If not, it is re- 
ceived with sufficient attention, although the listeners also 
talk together with a free and easy appreciation of the so- 
cial motive of the hour. 

The programme of the Russian Tea Party given from 
time to time by unofficial individuals to aid persons or to 
further plans not falling under a formal charity, fairly 
represents this section of amusements. A home-sick, 
broken-down girl had been saying for some time that she 
would never be well unless she could go back to Odessa, 
and accordingly the proceeds of the next Russian Tea 
Party were given to her. The services of fifteen volunteer 
performers were accepted. The first one came upon the 
stage at half past nine o 'clock. Piano solos and duets, vocal 
solos and duets, legerdemain and recitation alternated, 



PHILADELPHIA 247 

with intermission, v/liile tea was served from shining 
samovars, and bread and apples were piled again upon the 
tables. There was some noise and confusion during the 
music, but when a vest-making poet recited a long poem in 
classical Hebrew, satirizing the poet's income from his 
verse and the comparative wealth of the tailoring trade, 
the house quieted to absorbed attention. They seized it 
hungrily, this product of mind, and they called the author 
back again and again. They received each new poem with 
intuitive appreciation of a well turned phrase and a critical 
survey of the art for the art's sake. When the poet smiled 
and pointed to their '' wounds," they smiled too; at a hint 
of playfulness mirth lightened grave faces. There were 
ripples of laughter here and there and it seemed as if sun- 
light had flashed across the room. 

The labor parties and the labor unions attain perhaps 
the highest level of excellence. Native born men of repu- 
tation are asked to speak — a Socialist mayor was warmly 
welcomed — and there is a sustained interest in American 
civics and in practical and Utopian legislation leading to 
industrial relief. 

Their balls are not so much balls as opportunities for 
general conversations, friendly smoking, and food. The 
anarchists, for several years, have varied the winter's rou- 
tine by making of their Grand Annual Ball a visual satire 
upon the institutions of church and state. Young men 
dressed as Cossacks, policemen or Royal Guardsmen, pa- 
trol the hall and when ' ' the people, ' ' armed with whistles, 
give shrill signals they throw themselves upon a bystander 
and drag him to a buffoon judge. He mouths at the of- 
fender and fines him five cents for the good of the an- 
archist propaganda. A priest of the Greek church 
marries couples for five cents under the Jewish chuppah, 
and these unions have in more than one case formed the 
sole ceremonial basis of an American home. There is 
much laughter and merriment as the anarchist " priest " 
goes through his mummery. It is a surprise to learn that 
his gibberish has in truth made a marriage. All the time 
while whistles and shrieks of soldiers and people fill the 
air and while the " priest " intones, persistent hawkers 
cry, ' ' Buy bar tickets ! Buy bar tickets ! ' ' and thrust for- 
ward checks entitling one to drink. Many buy, induced 
by a business trick of the management, which turns on 
the steam heat, closes the windows, and so generates an 



248 • AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

almost 'insufferable atmosphere with its concomitant 
thirst. The green-horn on these occasions is subjected to 
sore-throat, dizziness and general malaise until he ceases 
to be a green-horn. 

From this gaiety that stings and fun brewed in bitter- 
ness, from the boisterous laughter of a group whose criti- 
cism of Society is anarchy, it is but a step to gaiety that 
seeks to soothe, to fun springing from sympathy and the 
disciplined quiet of another group whose criticism of So- 
ciety is without a party name. Here and there and far 
apart are the regenerative agencies, the endowed club 
rooms, the social settlements, and the philanthropies, all 
overcrowded and closing their doors to those who would 
say '' yes " to an invitation to enter. Everywhere are 
those other agencies v/hich would make for the brutaliza- 
tion of their habitues were it not for the innate fineness of 
those habitues themselves. They are trained to the desire 
for better things and they do not know how to find them 
in America. Wherever they can gain a foothold, a corner 
for their debates, literary societies persevere and thrive. 
A rare evening of good music echoes for months in the 
memories of the young men and women who almost night- 
ly hear the clattering discords of the dance-hall; a lecture 
on the unseen beauties of our environment arrests the 
gaze upon quaint doorways and curling smoke. In this 
great neglected garden of human-kind the gardeners are 
too few. Sometimes the greatest pity and pathos of it 
all seems to be the fertility of the field which awaits the 
seeds of Order, Beauty, and Knowledge so seldom flung 
within its boundaries. 



(C) CHICAGO 

In general the Russian Jew takes his amusements seri- 
ously. It is no mad endeavor to be epigrammatic which 
induces the statement that his amusement is almost a busi- 
ness, his business all but his amusement. Persecution in 
the old country, the struggle for existence in the new, 
have been anything but conducive to lightness of heart or 
of touch. It is enticing to enter on the subject of the 
philosophy of amusements, to make comparisons and to 
draw wider conclusions, but the limits of this paper 
forbid. 

The breaking of a glass in the orthodox wedding cere- 
mony of the Russian Jew is deeply symbolical of every 
amusement of the Ghetto. The glass is broken — so runs 
the explanation — to warn the Jew that he must not com- 
pletely surrender himself to mirth no matter how festive 
the occasion : Zion lies in ruin and it behooves the sons 
of the Covenant to be cast down until its v/alls be built 
up. Metaphorically the glass is broken in the very com- 
edies of the Yiddish theatres. The sound of its shattering 
runs through the strains of Jewish folk music, you hear 
it in the heavy mongrel tones of the Yiddish jargon itself, 
and the serious faces of the older folk of our modern 
American Ghettos are as constrained as if they were ever 
awaiting the melancholy crash of the fragile stuff of which 
life itself is made. 

The sober cast of Ghetto, of Russian Jewish amuse- 
ments, becomes strikingly apparent the moment one takes 
even a cursory bird's-eye-view of the subject in its entirety. 
While outlining my theme for this series of papers, to 
take an instance, I found it difficult to draw a hard and 
fast line between the diversion afforded by the synagogue 
and its festivals, and the pastimes which are purely secu- 
lar. I am not sure that a comprehensive paper should 
not include both; so intimately do the beth hamedrash 
(house of learning connected with the synagogue) and 
the religious rites and festivals enter into the amenities of 

249 



250 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

Ghetto life, so much does religion contribute to the mere 
pleasure of the orthodox Russian Jew — pleasure which 
his less orthodox brethren seek in the secular world with- 
out. And beyond all this there are a reason and a philoso- 
phy that lie deeper than a superficial observation might 
at first lead one to suppose; but again the lack of space 
forbids the digression. 

Chicago's one Yiddish theatre, formerly the Metropoli- 
tan, next called the Irwin, and afterward Glickman's, was 
almost exclusively devoted to the presentation of Jewish 
historical and religious plays, and to operas historical or 
religious in theme. The literary standard of the dramas 
presented here was about on a par with those produced 
in English theatres attended by audiences of the same 
status in life as the Eussian Jews of the Ghetto, and 
where the price of admission is about the same. In the 
old Metropolitan theatre I saw a Yiddish adaptation of 
" The Streets of New York " and "Woman Against 
Woman," which to the discerning will sum up the story 
fairly well. " Fairly well " is used advisedly because the 
standard of comparison is by no means rigid; for now and 
then Mr. Ellis F. Glickman, who is actor, manager and 
play^vright, too, puts a play on the boards which is su- 
perior in most respects to the average attraction offered 
by the surrounding theatres of the English-speaking dis- 
tricts. The same assertion may be made, within certain 
bounds, of the acting of the members of Mr. Glickman 's 
Yiddish stock company. The theatre is now closed be- 
cause it did not comply with the city regulations passed 
in the fall of 1903 after the disastrous Iroquois fire. There 
is therefore no regular Yiddish theatre here, " The Pa- 
vilion " being merely a hall for vaudeville performances 
and in no way representing the better intelligence of the 
Chicago Russian Jew. 

However, certain allowances ought to be made for the 
Yiddish actor when comparing him with the English 
speaking members of the profession who appeal to audi- 
ences of about the same grade at about the same price. In 
the first place, the Yiddish actor is harder pushed — every 
week sees a change of bill and he scarcely has had time to 
connnit the lines of one part before he is rehearsing the 
roles of a new play (which is the reason, by way of paren- 
thesis, why the prompter is always in evidence) ; and sec- 
ondly, the Yiddish actor is nine times out of ten a Yid- 



CHICAGO 251 

dish singer as well. He is more apt to win popularity 
among our Chicago Russian Jewish audiences by good 
singing than by an artistic rendering of a character. The 
Ghetto audiences are clamorous in their insistence on mu- 
sic and singing, and the encore and the applause always 
go to the most pleasing song and the best voice. Fine 
music finds quick appreciation here; and in this one re- 
spect certainly both audience and performers are far su- 
perior to the audience and performers of the English 
theatres of a corresponding grade. The orchestra of the 
Yiddish theatre is excelled by few in Chicago, nor is this 
in any wise accidental, for the Yiddish theatre Avithout 
good music were equivalent to a play without scenery. 

I saw in the Irwin theatre a play which was a Yiddish 
adaptation of Hamlet and the whole performance struck 
me as very much like the play of Hamlet with the part 
of Hamlet left out. Shakespeare was most neatly adapted 
out of the tragedy to make room for up-to-date melo- 
dramatic situations, for orthodox Jewish religious ceremo- 
nials, and for the dramatic triumph of the production — 
the singing of the Kaddish (prayer for the dead). A line 
or two copied from the programme may suffice to give 
even those who were not privileged to see " The Jewish 
Hamlet " an idea of the broad license that the adapter 
allowed himself. ' ' Act IV, Scene 2 — Great scene of the 
Jewish cemetery. Beautiful scenery painted specially for 
this production. Sad wedding of Vigder (Hamlet) and 
his dead bride Esther- (Ophelia) according to the Jewish 
religion. ' ' 

From the plays which any manager may supply it is 
always unsafe to draw conclusions of what the audience 
may demand. I should be loath to deduce from the mere 
presentation of this Yiddish Hamlet and plays of its type 
that Russian Jewish audiences were eager for the spilling 
of blood and for ultra-sensational situations and scenes. 
I noticed, and with more than a little rejoicing, that those 
sins against good taste which were intended to appeal to 
the sympathies of the audience won applause from the 
galleries only, and that the parquet, which represented the 
better class of the Russian Jews of the Ghetto, looked on 
in ominous silence at what they were unable to translate 
emotively. 

I believe that the younger element of the Ghetto is far 
more attracted by Vv^hat lies without than what lies within 



252 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

the confiiTes of that narrow district, and the constant tend- 
ency in amusements, as in other things, is centrifugal. 
The variety theatres down-town, the play-houses on the 
surrounding streets, draw a larger audience of young Rus- 
sian Jews than the Ghetto theatre itself. With very few 
exceptions — it may be doubted whether the phrase is 
half strong enough — the younger Russian Jews are 
neither proud of their Yiddish jargon nor of the ways of 
their ancestors, and they are only too quick to accept any- 
thing that may have an Americanizing influence. In Chi- 
cago, at any rate, the Yiddish theatre is not likely to out- 
last the life of the present generation, and it is fairly open 
to question whether it will endure that long. 

The lodges form a most significant element in the 
amusement of the Ghetto and contribute not a little to its 
social life, while like almost every other diversion, they 
add, or at least carry along, an element of religion arid 
charity. The various lodges, with their numerous orders 
and divisions, ramify through the entire Ghetto, spread- 
ing out in every direction, leaving few families uninflu- 
enced by their existence. The Chicago Ghetto contains 
seventy-five recorded lodges, thirty-two of which belong 
to the Order of B'rith Abraham and twenty to the West- 
ern Star, — a purely Chicago organization, and the other 
twenty-three to orders of less prominence. Like their 
Christian prototypes, the western lodges render an impor- 
tant economic service, namely that of life insurance, 
which, when all is said and done, serves as the chief rea- 
son and the best cause for their existence. 

Every once in so often, one of the seventy-five lodges 
will announce a ball or a party by way of benefit for the 
impoverished family of a defunct member, and so it is 
that these orders indirectly contribute their share to the 
amusement of the Ghetto. 

Regarding all balls and parties given in the Russian 
Jewish district, it may be asserted that there is little if 
anything to distinguish them from the social functions of 
a like nature given by Christians of the same status, and 
what little there is goes in favor of the Russian Jew on 
the side of decorum. I know from my own studies in the 
district through which Milwaukee Avenue cuts diagonally, 
and which represents one of the most cosmopolitan popu- 
lations in the city of Chicago, that the moral effect of the 
weekly Saturday night balls and masquerades is anything 



CHICAGO 253 

but elevating, and that the road to ruin for many a young 
girl begins here. 

Cases of moral depravity resulting from any dance 
given in the Ghetto district are rare enough to be prac- 
tically unknown. Of course, home training, custom and 
other elements must be taken into consideration when 
weighing the moral problem, and this lies "outside of this 
paper's boundaries. 

Zionism, which so deeply imbues the life and spirit of 
our American Ghettos at the present time, may be re- 
garded as the chief religious feature of the lodges, for they 
are more or less animated by its doctrines and given to the 
promulgation of its benefits. 

The same religious purpose sublimates the one impor- 
tant literary society of our Ghetto, the Hebrew Literary 
Association, which has a regular meeting place on West 
Twelfth Street. The library of the association numbers 
over 2,000 volumes devoted all but exclusively to modern 
Hebrew literature as contradistinguished from the still 
more modern Yiddish jargon. The club holds regular 
Sunday night meetings to listen to lectures in English and, 
Yiddish given by local authorities on Jewish history and 
literature, and less often to lectures on classic English 
prose and poetry. The surplus in the treasury of the club 
is given to the Order of the Knights of Zion, which con- 
tains six branches, numbering over 500 members in all, 
and this society in turn holds regular meetings in Porges, 
Schwarz, or Turner Halls, to spread a knowledge of 
Hebrew history, language and literature, with the central 
object of stimulating the Zionistic movement. The young- 
er members of the Knights of Zion Order have their lec- 
tures and lessons in English, the older members in Yid- 
dish. Besides the assistance which the Hebrew Literary 
Association lends the Knights of Zion, it also contributes 
liberally to a Zionistic Sunday school for children, where 
instruction is given in what may be broadly termed Juda- 
ism and Zionism. So again in surveying Ghetto amuse- 
ments in their entirety, the religious impulse and fervor 
become salient. 

The Lessing Club, which is far removed from the 
Ghetto district, is composed of wealthier Russian Jewish 
members than any of the organizations yet mentioned, and 
is, I believe, higher in social rank. There is nothing in 
particular to differentiate the Lessing from a hundred and 



254 AMUSEMENTS AND SOCIAL LIFE 

one othep clubs in tlie city, althougli the younger members 
have formed the Lessing Self-Educational Club, which is 
just what the name would imply. Like the Hebrew Liter- 
ary Association the Lessing Self-Educational Club em- 
ploys specialists to give lectures on literature and the arts ; 
and meetings are held with exercises and papers, for the 
purpose of spreading education and culture. 

The feast and ceremonies of the weddings contribute at 
least an element of amusement, and so by a liberal inter- 
pretation may be given a place in the topic. The more 
orthodox of the Russian Jews are married in the syna- 
gogue, the less orthodox, who are in a rapidly growing ma- 
jority, are married without its walls, either at home or in 
one of the public halls. In the synagogue weddings the 
glass dish is broken and the parents of the bride lead her 
three times around the groom, who stands under the 
canopy. The postnuptial festivities vary in brilliancy ac- 
cording to the means and liberality of the bride's parents; 
dancing and music are an important feature and few, if 
any, weddings are without them. The tendency to copy 
the forms observed by the non-Ghetto and richer Jews 
grows stronger with the passing of every day, and the cus- 
toms peculiar to Jewish weddings are fighting a battle for 
survival in which apparently they must soon lose. In 
short, the Americanization of the Russian Jew is thorough- 
going; and his amusements, his customs — all the outer 
reflections of at least the superficial part of his inner life 
— are taking on the color and form of his environment, 
standing out less and less as an entity distinguished by a 
color and form all its own. 



VIII 
POLITICS 



(A) NEW YOEK 
By Emanuel Heetz 

Memier 'New York Bwr 

(B) PHILADELPHIA 

By Charles S. Bernheimer 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Elijah N. Zoline 

Member Chicago Bar 



255 



POLITICS 

(A) NEW YORK 

All political parties, whether national or local, find re- 
cruits and adherents among the people who have been 
forced to leave the realm of the Czars for the past quar- 
ter of a century. Contrary to expectation, these new 
voters are not grouped and collected under the banner of 
any one political party or any one clan. 

Their political activity dates back to the early eighties, 
when the first wave of the great mass of Russian Jewish 
immigration reached these shores. It was then that the 
influx of Russian students began and lent a peculiar color 
to the character and activities of the Jewish immigrants. 
As might have been expected, the effect of liberty upon 
the masses of Russian Jews downtrodden in their mother 
country was in the beginning apparently disastrous. The 
anarchists and the socialists found some of their most ac- 
tive supporters among these younger Russian fugitives. 
The older class, either because of ignorance of politics or 
by reason of the immediate problem of supporting their 
usually large families, could not avail themselves of the 
same educational facilities. Their sons in the short space 
of time required for citizenship, after a course at the day 
or evening schools, were able to cope with other electors. 
But the older immigrants were not long to remain behind 
in their duties as American citizens. After a remarkably 
short time, old and young became citizens and set to work 
to master the fundamental principles of American consti- 
tutional government. Questions of the municipality began 
to engage their attention. Soon they not only mastered 
the problems that were propounded by the national and 
state parties, but also became eager students of municipal 
affairs. So important a factor has the Russian Jewish 
vote become in recent years that all parties have made a 
bid for its united support. 

We are now brought to the consideration of the position 

256 



NEW YORK 257 

the Russian Jew has of late years assumed with respect 
to the dominant political parties. As a rule, each class of 
voters belonging to a particular nationality before natural- 
ization is claimed in toto by either one or the other of the 
two great political parties. The Russian Jews, however, 
in spite of the fact that they were distributed among 
all the parties as to national questions, have in municipal 
affairs occupied a unique position of late. In the cam- 
paign of 1897 they were very largely among the reform 
forces then organized by the Citizens^ Union. AlthoiTgh 
the almost solid vote of the Russian Jews had little effect 
upon the general result, at that time it was sufficiently im- 
portant to arrest the attention of the fusion party in the 
next municipal campaign of 1901. It is almost incredible, 
but is nevertheless a fact, that the entire machinery of the 
fusion campaign was largely directed to that portion of 
the city mostly inhabited by the Russian Jewish citizens. 
It was there that the successful candidates for mayor and 
district attorney made their strongest appeals and re- 
ceived the most encouraging response. Little did they know 
the character of the citizens they so anxiously tried to con- 
vince of the justice of their cause. For never in their 
wildest dreams did they expect such an upheaval. But 
those who know the Russian Jew expected nothing less. 
Be that as it may, however, the phenomenal majorities of 
Tammany Hall were almost entirely annihilated and the 
Russian Jew — this time justly — may claim the lion's 
share in the result of the municipal election of 1901. The 
Second, Fourth, Eighth, Tenth, Twelfth and Sixteenth As- 
sembly Districts, which in former years ran up insur- 
mountable Tammany majorities, showed such a remarkable 
change that the other districts in the city normally in 
favor of reform movements had an easy task. Many have 
claimed the credit for this remarkable performance; few 
care to see the facts of the case. To the Russian Jew, with 
a mind quick to grasp simple business propositions, this 
problem of municipal reform was a very simple matter. 
They all remembered the first abortive effort at reform un- 
der the Strong administration with its few cases of good 
work accomplished among the desert of promises unper- 
formed and unfulfilled. They all remembered and suf- 
fered during the era of night under Tammany's regime 
from 1897 to 1901. Given this contrast, placed before the 
Russian Jew in a clear and intelligent manner, those who 



258 . POLITICS 

knew hiili had neither fear nor doubt as to which course 
he would pursue. 

Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of this cam- 
paign was the revelation of the Russian Jew as an active 
campaigner. He was not content with voting for the right 
cause alone; — he appropriated every street corner, every 
hall, every truck, every temporary platform in the various 
districts, and for an entire month called upon the passer- 
by to hear his reasons for supporting the fusion ticket. 
Young and old, these speakers, in English, in German, 
and in all the Jargon dialects conceivable, thundered 
against the iniquities of Tammany Hall and conducted a 
campaign the like of which New York had not seen. They 
demonstrated for all time that the Russian Jewish vote 
is a factor to be reckoned with. 

Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon that has 
challenged our attention in recent years is the appearance 
of the rapidly developing types of Russian Jewish poli- 
ticians. From year to year they have progressed along 
the various lines. Whether as district captains, election 
watchers, ballot clerks, campaign orators, they are becom- 
ing as distinct types as the Irish, the German, or the Yan- 
kee politicians. 

To them the problems of the ever-changing ballot laws 
are simple in the extreme. So well are they informed as 
to the provisions of these that results in their districts are 
tabulated as accurately as in the most enlightened sections, 
and their election officers perform all their work with the 
same speed and accuracy as do the ballot clerks and elec- 
tion officers of other neighborhoods. 

As is but natural, in course of time these young as- 
pirants for political preferment pass through a process 
of crystallization, and the efficient district captains and 
election clerks of two or three years' experience become 
budding leaders in the various localities of the Ghetto as- 
sembly districts. Their development is gradual and in- 
teresting. The Russian Jewish young man, generally a 
lawyer, who casts his fortunes with Tammany Hall, grad- 
ually assumes the habits of his Tammany confreres. He 
chews, smokes, drinks, gambles, visits the club-rooms re- 
ligiously, attends the politico-social functions of the year, 
is prominent in the purchase and dissemination of chow- 
der tickets, and is rewarded, perhaps, by being permitted 
to play at the Tammany chowder game of poker with the 



NEW YORK 259 

elite of the district. He is gradually taken into the con- 
fidence of the assembly district leader, in most cases called 
the " old man," and from time to time becomes the re- 
cipient of some political news emanating directly from 
the fountain head of Tammany Hall Democracy — the 
Democratic Club — or Tammany Hall proper. In time 
this aspiring politician becomes the constant companion 
of the leader, and at all dinners, meetings or functions 
acts as the host and direct personal representative of the 
all-powerful leader. For the leader in his bailiwick is su- 
preme, and to be in touch with him is to become in course 
of time a political power. If the young aspirant is faith- 
ful, the leader delegates a measure of his authority to his 
new fledgling, who, encouraged by the tokens of apprecia- 
tion on the part of his political sponsor, begins to see 
visions of power and is, possibly, led to aspire to the lead- 
ership himself. In a few instances, such young men get 
the nominations for the minor elective offices. 

Usually this is done only to test their fealty, for they 
are expected to stick to the organization in victory as well 
as in defeat. The many unsuccessful aspirants for elec- 
tive office try to find consolation in appointments such as 
positions in the corporation counsel's and district attor- 
ney's offices. So great has been the crop of candidates 
for these offices of late years, that in every assembly dis- 
trict we find the young men organizing independent Dem- 
ocratic clubs, generally bearing the name of the founder, 
for the purpose of demonstrating how great a vote they 
can command and thus either compelling recognition from 
the organization or, in case of failure, forcing their way 
into the regular organization of opposite political faith. 
They have but one ambition, and that is to attain judicial 
position, and to attain it they seek election as assembly- 
man or alderman as a stepping stone. 

As a rule, these young Russian Jewish men who make 
their way into Tammany Hall belong to a lower order. In 
some cases the office holders are taken from the most color- 
less class, having nothing but regularity and party fealty 
as their redeeming features. Usually, their education has 
ended with the completion of a course in the public schools. 
From that time they, mutatis mutandis, are close readers 
of the Daily Neivs, the World, and the Journal, and keep 
*' posted " on all political questions. Add to this the 
mellowing influences of the Tammany leaders' discourse 



260 . POLITICS 

and soei(?ty, and the young men are fit for any office within 
the gift of the '' people.'' 

The Republican Jewish politician is another remarkable 
product of the metropolis. Socially he is, perhaps, a grade 
higher than the former ; his parents, by dint of hard work, 
have amassed a comfortable fortune, and their offspring 
has possibly had the benefit of a better preliminary educa- 
tion and has come in contact with wealthier young men, 
who are Republicans in their political affiliations. He, 
like his Tammany Hall cousin, is a growth gradual in 
development, but is as positive a character as the former. 
A little more credit may be due to him by reason of the fact 
that his party is rarely, if ever, in power in the city of 
New York and most of his political '' patronage " consists 
of promises, conditioned upon its success and the disrup- 
tion and defeat of Tammany Hall, a hope upon which 
every Republican spellbinder loves to dwell. The fact that 
the state or national elections generally are favorable to 
his party makes small difference, as little or nothing per- 
colates from the state or national board to these dreamers 
of the Ghetto. A picturesque character this young 
" statesman " undoubtedly is. From early citizenship 
he carries himself like a " statesman." He believes him- 
self treading in the steps of Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, and 
Blaine, as his cousin in those of Jefferson, Jackson, Tilden, 
and Cleveland. His garb, his features, his periods, all 
savor of the statesman to be. Now and then one of the 
more inventive discovers that a page of Macaulay would 
fit into some stirring appeal and the speech or essay or 
paragraph is pressed into service and is sent resounding 
from a truck or platform over the heads of a host of boys 
who for the time being become ' ^ fellow citizens. ' ' The 
youngsters thus get their first baptism of political elo- 
quence from these campaigners. 

The Republican Russian Jewish politician gains admis- 
sion into the counsels of his party more readily than the 
Democratic. The power of the district leader is not so 
absolute as that of the Tammany man and the young men 
become members of the County Committee; some have 
even been known to raise their voices in that august as- 
sembly of archons of the local Republican party. In one 
or two cases revolt is ripe against the ** carpet-bag- 
ger " Republican leader. In time two or three Republi- 



NEW YORK 261 

can and Democratic assembly district leaders will be none 
other than the young Russian Jewish politicians. 

There is another political factor in the Ghetto which 
must not be lost sight of. In some respects this is the 
most remarkable of all. I refer to the Socialists. As a 
rule the Socialist leaders are students, whose collegiate 
course has been prematurely cut off by reason of migra- 
tions caused by anti-Semitism, or economic distress. After 
a short apprenticeship, either as a peddler or mechanic 
or unskilled worker at one of the trades, he quickly regains 
his equilibrium and — as has often been the case — man- 
ages to complete his studies in one of the colleges or uni- 
versities, of this city. Rarely, if ever, has another na- 
tionality furnished so many splendid examples of the 
hard working student who prosecutes his studies while 
undergoing great privations in his efforts to support not 
only himself, but in many cases the family as well. 

Regardless of what his privations may be, he throws 
himself into the study of literature, poetry and political 
economy and becomes a powerful debater or excellent 
journalist. One or two such bid fair to rival our ablest 
editors and campaign speakers. They are generally good 
Hebrew and Russian scholars and are able to draw upon 
the literatures of these languages to make their arguments 
acceptable and clear to all. 

The noblest type which has of late become general is 
the Russian Jewish mugwump ; the man who votes and 
thinks upon the highest planes of civic patriotism without 
regard to political preferment. As a rule, he is not a 
candidate for office, is either a professional or business 
man, and helps to form the great silent vote which in the 
last few years has upset the calculations of the wiseacres 
of all political parties. His class are the people who vote 
*' split tickets," who examine the characters of the candi- 
dates, and who thus sway the power from party to party 
as desert and political virtue are divided. These form the 
great portion of the uncontrollable and unapproachable 
vote of the Ghetto ; so much so that word goes forth from 
both political camps that time spent on attempted con- 
version of such voters is time wasted. This class furnishes 
the most valuable election officers and campaign speakers 
and the most promising guarantees of the ultimate com- 
plete redemption of the Ghetto from the influence of the 
machines. The arts of the older parties, which their de- 



262 POLITICS 

votees have stnclied for a lifetime, these progressive young 
voters, and for that matter the old ones as well, have mas- 
tered in a remarkably short time. The young people, 
aided by such journals as the Times and the Evening Post, 
and the older people by the German and Jewish news- 
papers, have become adepts in discussing municipal ques- 
tions and really form the most formidable menace to the 
continuance of Tammany rule. No audience in the city 
is quicker to grasp the questions at issue. Also no speaker 
is better informed or better prepared by example, quo- 
tation and explanation than the middle-aged Ghetto orator. 
He resorts to comparatively few devices of voice or diction. 
With examples drawn either from daily life or Biblical 
lore he brings home an argument to an intelligent audience 
more forcibly than do his younger and more progressive 
sons. He cares little for their political veneer. He is a 
plain spoken advocate of clean streets, parks, public schools, 
and honest police, and prates not of the immortal principle 
of the democracy of Jefferson and Jackson, as do his 
younger descendants. 

The following editorial from the Nation of December 1, 
1904, confirms the observations of the writer: ** It is 
clear . . . that our Jews and Southern Europeans do 
vote. A more important question, however, is whether they 
vote with discrimination. Do they always support the 
same parties; do they ever vote split tickets? A study of 
the returns for the last four years — including those for 
the November elections — shows that there are only eight 
assembly districts in Manhattan which, in both local, State, 
and national elections, do not invariably go one way. They 
are Manhattan 's * doubtful districts, ' which are appar- 
ently influenced by argument, and which may be expected 
to split their tickets. They are the Fifth, the Eighth, the 
Tenth, the Sixteenth, the Twenty-first, the Twenty-third, 
the Twenty-ninth, and the Thirty-first. Some of these are 
only slightly independent; the Twenty-ninth, for instance, 
gets into this good company simply because, this year, it 
voted for Roosevelt and Herrick. The average foreign 
population of these independent districts is 42 per cent., or 
just about the average for the whole island. Chiefly im- 
portant, however, is the fact that this list includes the 
Eighth, the Tenth, and the Sixteenth Assembly Districts. 
These are also situated south of Eleventh Street and east 
of the Bowery. 



A^i^TT^ YORK 263 

* ^ By all odds the most interesting is the Eighth. This is 
the district with the largest foreign population, and its 
population is very largely Jewish. It has such well-known 
Ghetto streets as Hester, Delancey, Eldridge, and Allen. 
Yet politically it is one of the most uncertain sections ; the 
majority of the winning candidates is always small. It 
voted for Bryan in 1900 ; for Roosevelt in 1904 ; for Coler 
in 1902; for Higgins this year. Its representative at Al- 
bany is alternatively a Republican and a Democrat. The 
Tenth District, which also shows unmistakable signs of in- 
dependence, is strongly Jewish. This year it voted for 
Roosevelt and Herrick. The Sixteenth, which also divided 
on State and national lines, is populated almost exclusively 
by Jews from Austria-Hungary. Similar independence is 
evidenced in districts largely native, such as the Fifth, the 
Twenty-first, and the Twenty-third ; but at least it is plain 
that the Jewish localities, chiefly recruited from immigra- 
tion, are not lacking in the first essentials of good citizen- 
ship.'/ 

It is but natural that so many shades of political leader- 
ship should lead to the creation of political organizations. 
In most instances, these are ephemeral and rarely survive 
a fatal election. Even in case of success at the polls they 
usually survive just long enough to provide a number of 
the ambitious with berths at the public crib. On the other 
hand, some have builded better than they knew, and have 
become powerful political bodies to the extent of either 
carrying the assembly district for good government or 
gradually making such inroads into the vote of the dom- 
inant party that success is but a question of time. The 
leaders of such political organizations have in a few in- 
stances received recognition from the party of good govern- 
ment. 

Perhaps no other phase of this discussion can be ap- 
proached with more certainty than the problem of deter- 
mining whether the Russian Jewish vote is controllable. 
Inquiry as to how votes are acquired or controlled by 
illegitimate or questionable means will demonstrate the con- 
tention that the Russian Jewish vote is neither controllable 
nor purchasable. The Russian Jewish citizens as a body 
are not an office seeking or office holding class. They have 
but few representatives in departments not under civil 
service regulations. The civil service protected officers 
carry with them independence in voting. The offices whose 



264 POLITICS 

occupants change with each administration are sought for 
by all but Russian Jewish voters. Candidates for such 
offices are the habitues of the Tammany assembly district 
clubs — the saloon brigade of candidates for office, who 
drink with every newcomer. The Russian Jewish citizen 
will have none of the inferior positions, such as those in 
the street cleaning or dock department, nor are there Rus- 
sian Jewish laborers in the department of parks or public 
works. The higher offices of these departments are not yet 
within his reach and he therefore concludes to wait his 
chance. Meanwhile, he continues to demonstrate his fit- 
ness, his ability, his readiness, to pass civil service examina- 
tions such as are imposed by the post office and custom 
house. 

The club and the saloon are the marts where voters are 
either *' influenced " or bought outright. The class of 
votes obtained in the latter place are rather risky ** invest- 
ments ' ' in these days of the secret ballot. For he who sells 
his vote may nevertheless go into the booth and vote as his 
^' conscience '* dictates. As to the former method, most 
Russian Jewish citizens are an industrious class, and think 
more of earning an honest livelihood than of bartering 
their votes for cash. 

One need but examine the registration lists of a single 
assembly district, as the writer has done, to convince him- 
self that the Russian Jew is very much in earnest where 
politics are concerned. The overwhelmingly Republican 
districts, the best and wealthiest in the city, have an alarm- 
ingly large number of citizens who neither register nor 
vote. An even larger proportion of those who register do 
not vote. To the Russian Jew the day of election is not 
a holiday in the sense that he is to have his annual ex- 
cursions or trips of recreation out of the city. Many days 
before election, he informs himself as to the merits of the 
respective candidates, by attending meetings, reading 
papers, and by discussion at his cafe or after his lodge 
meetings. When election day arrives he has made up his 
mind how to vote and he does vote, neither pleasure nor 
business exigency preventing him. A great many other 
citizens of foreign extraction mistake election day and turn 
it into a riotous feast, to the discomfiture of the election 
officers, who find it difficult to cope with the curious in- 
ventions of the Bacchanalians that wield the power of the 
ballot in the secrecy of the election booth. Not so with 



NEW YORK 265 

the Russian Jew. He does not drink anything stronger 
than tea before he votes and after he has voted he goes 
about his business without celebrating or rioting. Com- 
pared with the American cycling, golfing, automobiling, 
and football fraternity, who either intentionally forget or 
do not care for the issues and principles at stake, the Rus- 
sian Jew is certainly an excellent example of new citizen- 
ship. 

A most important factor in the political development 
of the Russian Jew has been the Jewish press. Although 
published and for the most part sold on the lower East 
Side, the Yiddish papers have reached the remotest corners 
of the country. 

The oriental substratum in the mind of Russian Jews 
must be appealed to in a different manner from that of 
the humdrum, every day, political intelligence of the voter 
who is swayed by newspaper reading. The Russian Jew 
examines with the eye of a critic the arguments presented 
on the editorial page. He wiio would convince him must 
put forth his best efforts. The Russian Jew is witty by 
nature and appreciates the political diatribes which are 
placed before him by these many advocates of heterogene- 
ous factions. There is a novelty, a charm, an ingenuity 
about these papers on political questions. 

No matter how adaptable the Russian Jew may be and 
no matter how true the statement that no party can claim 
him to the exclusion of others, still it is a fact daily more 
and more apparent, that the independent reform element 
on municipal questions has become a most alarming sign of 
the times in the political parties. The younger element 
who have had a college or university education form the 
hotbeds of independent voting and reform ideas. As this 
class is growing larger year by year they will certainly 
have to be reckoned with by every party which has success 
at the polls as one of its objects. 

If the proportion of Russian Jewish electors to the total 
vote be a consideration for assigning public office to the 
representatives of any particular class, the Russian Jews 
are far behind all others in the distribution of offices. 
Even if we include the elective offices they receive much 
the smallest share of party patronage. While it is true 
that whatever positions are distributed among them are 
generally positions of importance, still most of these they 
attain by competitive examination, which in recent years 



266 POLITICS 

has really taken the vast majority of offices from the gift 
of the party in power. It is, therefore, to the elective 
office or confidential appointive ones that we must direct 
our attention. In the Federal service, if we exclude a 
number of specialists or statisticians, there are none. 
These, too, are civil service appointments. As to those 
elected to office, our field of vision is of necessity limited by 
the fact that the Russian Jew has graduated but a very 
few of such office-holders. An alderman, here and there, 
two or three assemblymen, probably one justice and a dep- 
uty district attorney, and perhaps a deputy cor- 
poration counsel, and the list is complete. Taken all 
in all, these elected representatives of the Russian Jew 
are not brilliant examples of what they have produced by 
way of good citizenship. For in those firstlings of elected 
officers party spirit is developed to an alarming degree and 
in most cases they simply register the fiat or party caucuses 
with as scrupulous care and obedience as the most thorough- 
going machine men. Small wonder, then, that in one case, 
when a little independence was about to be developed the 
bold office-holder was promptly called to account and with 
the fatality of the punishment of the Mafia the victim was 
denied renomination and his usefulness in the office held 
was forthwith dispensed with — all because of a too ready 
desire to air his opinion and discuss questions which were 
simply to be voted upon. The machine resents nothing so 
much as disobedience in any form. The elective office- 
holder is but one small wheel in the scheme of machine 
government. All that he is expected to do is to obey and 
to vote ; to talk, unless requested so to do, means political 
annihilation. 

It is yet too early, however, to judge the Russian Jewish 
office-holder of either kind. We have witnessed but the 
earliest beginning of such careers. The college and uni- 
versity men are still in the early twenties and have not 
yet had an opportunity to be put upon their mettle. 
Another ten years will witness the elevation to office of some 
of these young men ; they will compare favorably with other 
candidates of the older parties, having a fundamental edu- 
cation that will aid them materially in their preparation 
for the public office which they are bound to occupy. 

Time was when a great portion of Russian Jews could 
be found in the Socialist and Anarchist camps. The So- 
cialist party in particular had its remarkable leaders and 



NEW YORK 267 

editors, who made such noteworthy strides in these sec- 
tions of the city that their party spread to almost every 
state of the Union. Their emissaries organized the party 
in every state. The Anarchist elements at one time num- 
bered among its hosts a number of Russian Jewish immi- 
grants fresh from the country where they had been op- 
pressed. But as time went on, as prosperity dawned on 
them, they gradually drifted by way of the Socialist party 
into temporary political obscurity, only to reappear in one 
or the other political parties. The Socialist Labor party at 
one time was the third largest party in the city. By reason 
of the Social Democratic schism, its numbers have been deci- 
mated and we have ardent DeLeonites combating still more 
ardent followers of Debs with even greater bitterness than 
they do the other parties. The two sections of the Socialist 
party today are each firmly held together by rigid plat- 
forms, containing very nearly all their declarations of be- 
lief and articles of creed. But they have yet to demon- 
strate that they will ever wield any power in the city as a 
whole. In one or two assembly districts they are ripe for 
the election of either an assemblyman or alderman or both. 
But the Socialist assemblyman or alderman pure and simple 
is as yet a figment of the imagination, although in a num- 
ber of instances the candidates are of so high a character 
that their possible election could be considered as much of 
a personal tribute as an experiment in having a Socialist 
in office. It cannot be denied, however, that small as it is, 
the Socialist party has mastered the principles of active, 
nay, of aggressive campaigning, and its leaders are re- 
markably able orators and debaters, and explain and enun- 
ciate the principles for which they stand in a manner sec- 
ond to none of the speakers of the other political parties. 

And so the stream of Russian Jewish citizens grows 
through constant accretion, naturalization as well as by the 
coming of age of the younger immigrants who have been 
educated in this country. Each day has its number of 
these industrious craftsmen or business men both at the 
state courts and Federal courts. To many understanding 
of the mysteries of English chirography and reading have 
been denied. And though old and decrepit, many of these 
men have toiled two and three terms at the evening schools 
of the city gradually preparing themselves for citizenship. 

An examination will disclose hundreds of newly made 
citizens weekly. A new trade has sprung up in the Jewish 



268 POLITICS 

bookstores; thousands and thousands of civil service and 
citizenship manuals are annually printed and sold for the 
purpose of enabling immigrants to be admitted to citizen- 
ship. 

It is not possible even approximately to guess at the 
number of Russian Jewish voters in this city. With the 
American education and citizenship come also in many 
cases the desire to Americanize the names, yea, even the 
first names of their owners. "When Tultchinsky becomes 
Anthony; Tonkinogy Thomas; Tabatchnikoff Tobias, and 
Tamashefsky O'Brien or McCarthy, the city record con- 
taining a list of voters may tell a deceitful story. 

Perhaps the most difficult problem that could be set 
before an observer of these children of the Ghetto is to form 
a true estimate of their character as citizens. Some opin- 
ions have the ravings of anti-Semitism as their sole inspira- 
tion ; those who hold them see nothing in this host of newly 
made citizens save miscreants, and if there be brilliant ex- 
amples these generous critics regard them merely as excep- 
tions to the rule previously laid down. On the other hand, 
such impartial observers as Jacob A. Riis, Ida M. Van 
Etten and others have sent forth into the world different 
opinions of these Russian Jewish citizens. Thus : 

^' Politically the Jews possess many characteristics of the 
best citizens. Their respect and desire for education make 
them most unlikely to follow an ignorant demagogue, while 
for a still deeper and more radical reason they make the 
enlightened selfishness their standard of all political warth. 
The centuries during which every conscious or unconscious 
tendency of the government, under which they lived, has 
been to make their individual and race advancement their 
single object have developed traits of character most unfa- 
vorable to that blind partisanship which is requisite for the 
successful carrying out of the objects of political organiza- 
tions like Tammany Hall. The education given by the 
modern labor movement has, in a great degree, transformed 
their race-feeling into a class-feeling and they now look 
with zeal to the advancement of the working people, in 
whose elevation they recognize that their hope for the fu- 
ture lies. 

** The one or two Jewish political demagogues who strive 
to create a following on the East Side have met with 
doubtful success. In fact, there does not exist a more un- 
promising field in New York for the political trickster than 



NEW YORK 269 

the Jewish quarters of the city. Their quiet, critical analy- 
sis of political nostrums is most disheartening to the district 
leaders of Tammany Hall. ' ' ^ 

That the Russian Jew has come to stay is conceded, that 
his influence in this as well as in other spheres of life will 
have to be reckoned with, is equally clear. 

* Ida M. Van Etten, " Russian Jews as Desirable Immigrants," Forum, April, 
1893. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

The Russian Jew comes from a country where despotism 
holds sway, where he has had little chance for the exercise 
of political privileges. He comes here with a tradition so 
different from ours that at first he is bewildered by the 
political conditions. He observes contradictions and com- 
plications. His spirit is foreign to the American and 
Anglo-Saxon, which seemingly tolerates many abuses until 
it is ready to act. His attitude is apt to be cynical or in- 
different; and in either case he may fall in with the pre- 
vailing notions of politics, with all that they imply. Or he 
may, by virtue of the unsatisfactory condition of his eco- 
nomic life and because of an idealism typical of a certain 
class of Russian thinkers be in constant revolt against the 
powers that be, actively joining in the meetings and demon- 
strations in behalf of the Anarchist or the Socialist cause, 
and refraining from co-operation with the regular political 
parties. If the Russian Jew is a young man born on Amer- 
ican soil, or one who came here at an early age, he is likely 
to imbibe the American and Anglo-Saxon tradition, and 
may be like the ordinary easy-going American, or lil?:e the 
American who ''is in it for all it is worth," or of those 
who are fighting for reform, or finally, among those who 
desire an entire change of the social system. 

The study of practical politics among a particular class 
will reveal many features of the general condition. The 
large American cities present the worst sides of American 
practical politics, and Philadelphia stands out in unholy, 
pre-eminent glory in this respect, for here the overwhelming 
control by politicians of both state and city have made pos- 
sible the corruptions of politics in an extreme degree. 

Politics, to the ordinary American mind, imply a bus- 
iness, conducted by a regularly organized band who have 
secured control of public offices, public franchises, and 
public influences of all kinds, and use them for their per- 
sonal purposes, and for extending their authority as non- 
official controllers of the public purses of the citizens. He 

270 



PHILADELPHIA 271 

who wishes something in the political line must go to one 
of this band. In every section of the city, in the various 
wards and divisions, there are those who are known to have 
a ' ' pull. ' ' They do not necessarily hold office ; their power 
depends on their influence in the political organization. 
The ordinary American citizen, with his blind worship of 
party politics, bows to the will of this organization, and is 
subservient to its leaders. 

Should it be a matter of surprise, therefore, that the 
immigrant from Russian and Eastern Europe, with such 
a conception placed before him, should succumb to the 
temptations to which many a so-called American citizen 
succumbs, or be as indifferent to political effort as this same 
American citizen? Can it be a matter for wonder if the 
teachers of practical politics, the '' heelers," and the 
*' rounders," are such as we allow to control our wards 
and divisions, that they graduate from their schools the 
promising pupils of nationalities and classes whose votes 
and influence are desired? To any one who knows our 
politics as conducted it must be clear what sort of tools a 
politician will use, and we consequently find a coterie of 
Russian Jewish workers fully as unscrupulous as their 
leaders; and being poor men, with small ways for the low 
class work they do, their actions present a most unlovely 
appearance. But from the point of view of public morality 
they are not worse than leaders who do their work with all 
the semblance of decorum. 

The wards in which the Russian Jewish population 
chiefly resides are the First, Second, Third, Fourth and 
Fifth, covering an area of nearly two square miles. The 
boundaries are. Chestnut Street on the north from Dela- 
ware River to Seventh Street; the Delaware River on the 
East to the foot of Mifflin Street; Mifflin Street on the 
south to Passyunk Avenue; thence north along Passyunk 
Avenue to Ellsworth Street, to Broad Street; thence with 
Broad Street as the western boundary to South Street; 
along South Street to Seventh Street, and up Seventh to 
Chestnut Street. 

It should be noted that there is very little Jewish popu- 
lation in the northern end of this section above Spruce 
Street. 

The number of votes will grow not only because of in- 
creased naturalization among those of the population bom 
abroad, but because of the young men coming of age. It 



272 POLITICS 

must be -borne in mind that we are considering a population 
which began to migrate to this country in large numbers 
in 1882, so that only in 1903 did the first American-born 
descendants of this main body become voters. All others 
must go through the form of naturalization. 

There was a second large stream of immigration in the 
early nineties, and a larger naturalization as a result of 
this has doubtless taken place in the last few years, five 
years being required for the acquiring of citizenship. The 
younger men, born abroad, but in touch with our institu- 
tions, naturally proceed to become naturalized as soon as 
they attain the age of twenty-one years. 

In national politics some of the Russian Jews are Re- 
publicans, some Democrats, and some Socialists. With the 
strongly prevalent Republican party sentiment in this city 
one would naturally expect to find many in the ranks of 
this party, yet there was a strong current of feeling for 
Bryan and Debs in one campaign. In the Third Con- 
gressional District fight for a seat in the national House 
of Representatives, many took an active part for McAleer, 
the Democratic incumbent, who was running for re-election 
against the Republican machine candidate. A committee 
of Jewish representatives, the Hebrew McAleer Campaign 
Committee, assisted in the campaign, and a number of meet- 
ings were held under its auspices. 

There can be no question of a strong Socialist sentiment. 
When a prominent Socialist speaker addresses a meeting 
he can count upon an audience of fully five hundred per- 
sons. The Socialist newspapers are read in goodly num- 
bers. At labor, social and literary gatherings. Socialism 
is an active, interesting subject of discussion. 

I have been much impressed with the nobility of purpose 
which inspires leading Socialists among the Russian Jewish 
population. The ordinary politician, the party American, 
the political reformer even, may regard it as a fanaticism, a 
vain striving after an impossible ideal. And yet it is help- 
ing to educate the community in social responsibility; it 
stands for a purity which will some day help to cleanse 
the city of some of its political dirt. Many of the most 
intelligent Russian JeY\^ish men and women are Socialists. 
They are animated by a strong propagandist spirit and are 
helpful to the leaders of the Socialist cause. 

The radical and reactionary element of the other extreme 
is the Anarchist. It is not so strong in numbers as the 



PHILADELPHIA 273 

Socialist. Most of the members of this party are philosoph- 
ical Anarchists and not the red-handed agitators pictured 
by the newspapers. 

Mere political reform, or municipal reform, does not find 
much favor. I remember addressing a society composed 
of Russian Jews on the subject of political reform, and 
besides giving my own views quoted those of John Jay 
Chapman, I was told in the discussion which followed that 
the description of the political disease as it had been pre- 
sented was as strong as any of their most radical members 
could give, but the remedy was ' ' Oh ! so weak ; it was like 
attempting to cure a thoroughly diseased body with a por- 
ous plaster." 

I was not surprised, therefore, to find that there was 
very little affiliation with the independent municipal party, 
the Municipal League. Here again they were not different 
from their neighbors, for it has been difficult to maintain 
Municipal League organizations in the wards to which our 
discussion is being confined. 

The Jews of older residence here, those of the immigra- 
tions before the Russian migration of the early eighties, 
have always held aloof from any movement looking to the 
concentration of a so-called Jewish vote, and the formation 
of any political organization composed wholly of Jews. 
Such organization is much more possible among the Russian 
Jewish population, because of its settlement in large masses 
in one district, with a community interest of race and re- 
ligion intensified by close social union and mutual responsi- 
bilities and needs. In this district there are other nation- 
alities which form distinct groups, such as the Italians and 
the negroes. There are also Irish and Americans. 

The Russian Jews have not voted as a class for one par- 
ticular party, but have organized distinctive clubs and 
committees for one party or another. The objections to 
such organizations are well set forth in a petition to the 
court in 1895 against the granting of a charter to the Fourth 
Ward Hebrew Republican Club. It stated that it was " a 
racial or religious political club," that it was *' against 
public policy in that it tends to the union of church and 
state;" that its objects "tend to introduce religion into 
politics and to excite racial and religious prejudice." 
Adolph Eichholz, who acted as attorney for the objector, 
wrote as follows to the counsel of the club, expressing views 
generally held by Jews of older residence : 



274 • POLITICS 

** . .' . Not only is it opposed to the spirit of Amer- 
ican institutions that any set of men belonging to one 
race or to one religious denomination should band them- 
selves together for political purposes, but it is also reason- 
ably certain that the members of such organizations will be 
made the victims of unscrupulous schemes. One of the 
prime motives prompting the filing of these exceptions on 
the part of a co-religionist is a solicitude for the welfare 
of the misguided members and prospective members of this 
and all other so-called ^ Hebrew ' and ' Jewish ' political 
clubs. The organizers of such clubs are, as a rule, men 
who for their own selfish ends, use this means of impressing 
party leaders Vvdth the fact that they control a large number 
of ' Hebrev/ ' votes. Organizations formed upon such lines 
mmst necessarily interfere with the elevation of the standard 
of true citizenship. Hebrew citizens take an interest in 
politics, and there is no reason why they should not do 
so after the manner of all other citizens, but their political 
activity has been and should be solely and purely that of 
good, loyal, and patriotic American citizens regardless of 
what may have been the country of their birth and inde- 
pendent of any religious belief or racial connections. 

' ' In the past those v/ho held more exalted views of citi- 
zenship have necessarily been limited to merely persuading 
others from joining such anti- American organizations. 
Now that judicial approval is sought it becomes a duty to 
interpose more formal objections." 

That the agglomeration of masses of foreigners into sep- 
arate political organizations of voters is subversive of their 
best interests as citizens there can be no doubt. The Rus- 
sian Jewish element, like other elements of foreign origin in 
the down-town section, is in the habit of working unitedly 
and finds it natural to form political clubs. The common 
religion is but one feature that differentiates this body from 
the rest of the community; and the effect of this feature 
ought not to be exaggerated, where division along racial 
lines in the lower part of the city is so common. 

The attempts to conduct political organizations have met 
with obstacles among Russian Jews, because of individual- 
ism of this population, which owing to jealousies constantly 
disrupts. The United Citizens' Club, which was organized 
for the protection of Jewish immigrants and citizens, and 
which has a membership of about a thousand, participated 
in the campaign of the winter of 1904, supporting the Dem- 



PHILADELPHIA 275 

ocratic ticket. During active political campaigns clubs are 
organized, but when the excitement of the campaign dies 
out the interest in the clubs flags, and the promoter of the 
club, a candidate or a ward leader, often finds it diliicult 
to maintain it. Some of the clubs, like many other clubs, 
no matter what the class of its members, flourish as card- 
playing concerns. 

The Russian Jewish politician has been able to gain but 
little in party power in this city. The willing tool of the 
political boss, he bewails the fact that he cannot control 
a large Jewish vote, so that his influence will be stronger. 
As a division '' heeler," he controls a number of votes and 
is rewarded with some petty office, or opportunity, which 
will enable him to '' squeeze " his neighbors. 

Public offices held by this population are insignificant in 
importance and small in number. They include a member 
of the Board of Education, two common couneilmen, several 
school directors, some x^olice officers, constables, and park 
employees. The negro must be a much more valuable 
political worker from the point of view of the office dis- 
tributers, for of 170 city employees from the Fifth Ward, 
when inquiry was made some years ago, about 40 were 
negroes.^ 

When we come to the matter of a controllable vote, the 
subject is difficult, — that is to say, it is difficult to point out 
which element of our entire city population is the worst 
offender in this respect. The Russian Jcavs doubtless con- 
tribute a quota. Some are said to sell their votes outright ; 
others to vote according to the instructions of the police 
officials who protect them against the rigorous enforcement 
of ordinances. For example, the push cart dealers and ped- 
dlers must have licenses and are required to be kept moving. 
Police officials can exercise their " discretion " if a peddler 
will vote as they direct. The dealer who has his shop open 
on Sunday can secure protection against enforcement of the 
Sunday law if he is '' in with " the police. Many a prac- 
tice which violates the law can be connived at if the viola- 
tor will vote the ' ' right way. ' ' He may, in addition, have 
to secure '' immunity " through other considerations as 
well. The system of illicit protection and control among 
this population does not differ in principle from that in 
other sections of the city ; it merely varies according to the 
nature of the business. The politicians in control of the 

^Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro, p. 381. 



276 POLITICS 

city know the means of exploitation available. The 
Philadelphia Ledger^ in an article in its issue of De- 
cember 11, 190-4, on " The Organization and Extortion," 
contained the following: " The small dealers along South 
Street and Second Street, Germantown, Frankford and 
Kensington Avenues are subjected to an almost perpetual 
demand for both money and services. In the Third and 
Fifth Wards the merchants are coerced into padding the 
assessors' lists; to recognize non-resident office-holders as 
inmates of their own homes, and to hand up money regu- 
larly to the accredited representatives of the organization. 
They get, for their money and service, the right to use the 
sidewalk beyond the three-foot line for displaying their 
wares, and they may employ barkers without fear of mo- 
lestation. The toll upon these merchants ranges all the 
way from 25 cents to $5 a week each. The same applies to 
push cart men and itinerant peddlers, who, in addition to 
paying the usual peddlers' tax to the city, must submit 
to petty larceny at the hands of the police, who take all 
manner of small wares without even saying * by your 
leave.' The money and goods thus taken from small deal- 
ers and peddlers amounts in the aggregate to thousands of 
dollars annually. ' ' 

The Russian Jews as a class are capable of political 
thought far superior to that of any other foreign element 
which the slum politician seeks to control, and with the 
growth of a body of young voters who are coming of age 
the intelligent voting population will become stronger and 
stronger. These young men are showing an active interest 
in political and social subjects, and if their present interest 
is any indication of their strength of action as voters we 
may look to a vigorous political element. If they realize 
their opportunity and are not swamped by the desire for 
mere material success, they can become a powerful factor 
which will help to redeem us from the degradation of slum 
politics. 

Many of these young men, brought up in the public 
schools, living to a considerable degree in the environment 
of the average American, imbued with the spirit of patriot- 
ism, will with the socialists and the thinkers of the older 
generation, form a body of voters possessing a high, intel- 
ligent idea of citizenship. They will have a principle which 
will place them in the van with those who are working for 
political and social ideals. 



(0) CHICAGO 

While honor is said to be the iinderlying principle in an 
aristocracy and fear in a despotic monarchy, civic virtue is 
fundamental in a republic. The citizen who is fully con- 
scious of his civic duties towards his governm.ent and his 
country, who is willing to lay aside his personal interest for 
the greatest good of the greatest number of his fellow citi- 
zens, is the citizen who preserves our freedom and institu- 
tions, and so long as there is a majority of citizens endowed 
with that sterling quality of civic virtue, so long there will 
be no danger as to the stability of our republican institu- 
tions. Our naturalized citizens, coming now as they do, 
mostly from countries where either despotism or pretended 
'' honor " is the basic principle of government, very quick- 
ly, upon becoming citizens here, realize their new respon- 
sibilities, which inspire them with loyalty to the country 
of their adoption. They are grateful for the confidence 
reposed in them, in giving them a share in the administra- 
tion of our government. 

To all of this, the Russian Jew is no exception. Having 
no civil rights in Russia, he seizes the opportunity given 
him by our laws, and becomes a citizen of the United States. 
No one can, on the average, be more depended upon to 
vote rightly on all public questions than the Russian Jew. 
Whereas the average naturalized citizen leaves behind him 
a country where his race predominates, and to which he 
could return in safety in case of adversity, the Russian Jew 
is not so situated. He comes here to stay. To him this is 
almost the only country that offers relief and shelter. 

The Russian Jew in America is well pleased with the 
freedom granted him and has not looked to any considerable 
extent for public ofiice as a means for a livelihood or pro- 
motion. In the city of Chicago, and county of Cook, with 
a Russian Jewish population of about 75,000 and comprise 
ing not less than 18,000 voters, only a hanaful hold public 
offices, most of them unimportant. An exception is that 
of Mr. Abel Davis, a Russian Jew, who was elected recorder 

277 



278 POLITICS 

of deeds in the election of November, 1904. His nomina- 
tion was brought about by Russian Jewish Republican 
clubs. Mr. Davis was a lieutenant in the Spanish- Ameri- 
can war, and saw actual service in Cuba. He was for one 
term a member of the Illinois legislature. Other officials 
include deputy health inspector, deputy clerks of the court 
and recorder, and assistant state's attorney. 

There is good prospect that in the future the Russian 
Jews will participate at the primary election of both par- 
ties ; they will endeavor to elect their own delegates. 

The Russian Jews, as a whole, are for personal liberty 
in the fullest sense of the word. Believing that the Demo- 
cratic party can be more trusted in safeguarding the per- 
sonal liberty of the people, and fearing a revival of the 
Blue Laws in Chicago, they generally vote the Democratic 
ticket. This is not, hoAvever, the general rule in congres- 
sional and presidential elections. The following is a table 
of the votes in the Ninth Ward, the majority of which have 
been cast by Russian Jews since the year 1900.^ 

City Election, April 4, 1899: For Mayor— Carter, Re- 
publican, 2316; Harrison, Democrat, 3130; Altgeld, Inde- 
pendent, 750; Keroin, Prohibitionist, 12. 

Presidential Election, November 6th, 1900 — McKinley, 
3034; Bryan, 3591. 

City Election, April 2, 1901 : For Mayor— Henecy, 3088 ; 
Harrison, 3991. 

Congressional and County Election, November 4, 1902: 
For State Treasurer — Busze, Republican, 2853 ; Duddleson, 
Democrat, 2946. 

At the city election, which took place on April 7th, 1903, 
Mayor Harrison, Democrat, carried the ward by 1679 ma- 
jority over Stewart, Republican. 

At the election of November, 1902, a very notable event 
took place in the 17th Senatorial District, largely popu- 
lated by Russian Jev/s, when Clarence S. Darrow, chief 
counsel for the miners' union before the Anthracite Coal 
Commission at Philadelphia, was elected to the legislature 
by a majority of 6000 on an independent ticket. 

In the November, 1904, election, the most representative 
Russian Jewish ward, the Ninth, was carried for Roosevelt 
by about 900 majority. 

1 The Russian Jewish settlement emhraces the Ninth Ward, part of Tenth, 
part of Eleventh, part of Nineteenth, oart of Fourteenth, Fifteenth. Sixteenth. 



CHICAGO 279 

Socialism does not flourish to any considerable extent 
among tlie Russian Jews in Chicago. Of all the Russian 
Jewish voters throughout the city only about 500 cast 
Socialist votes. 

The new generation of the Russian Jews will be the 
Jews of America. They will lead in thought and morals. 
As to politics, I believe they will safeguard the interests 
of the people, and will have in time considerable influence 
in the government of our country. 



IX 
HEALTH AND SAKITATION 



(A) NEW YOEK 
By Maurice Fishbekg, M. D. 

Medical Examiner United Hebrew Charities, New York City 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 
By Chaeles S. Beenheimer 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Kate Levy, M. D. 

Former Instructor hi Clinical Medicine 
Woman's Medical College, Northwestern University 



281 



HEALTH AND SANITATION 

(A) NEW YORK 

Physically the Jews appear to be inferior to the Anglo- 
Saxons in the United States. They are about five feet five 
inches in height on the average, which is more than the 
Jews in eastern Europe measure. There, it v/as found that 
the average stature of the Jews was about five feet three 
to five feet four inches. It appears that the immigrant 
Jews, like immigrants of other races, are taller than the 
average of the stock from v/hich they come. This is best 
explained by the fact that it is mostly the taller and per- 
haps also the stronger physically who venture on a long 
journey to a distant land. In general it can be stated 
that this shortness of stature of the Jews is primarily due 
to race influence. It seems that the ancient Jews were 
also not tall. They are said to have been, compared with 
the Amorites, sons of Anak, as ' ' grasshoppers in their own 
sight.'* It has also been shown that the races and peoples 
among whom the eastern European Jews have lived for 
centuries, are mostly of a short stature, as for instance, the 
Slavonians in Russia, Galicia, and Roumania. Added to 
this, their abject poverty, the underfeeding, the insanitary 
conditions of the European Ghettos, have conspired to re- 
duce the physique of the Jew. It is a striking fact that 
wherever they have been given a chance to recuperate, they 
have gained one or two inches of stature.^ Thus the native 
Jews in New York city, the children of the immigrants, are 
much taller than their parents, and Joseph Jacobs has found 
that in London also the West End Jews are taller than 
their poorer coreligionists in the East End.^ 

Another characteristic of the Jews is their narrow chest. 
It is known that in the majority of healthy individuals the 

1 For details about the stature of the Jews in the United States, and how it 
is influenced by heredity and environment, see M. Fishberg, " Materials for the 
Physical Anthropology of the Eastern European Jews," Annals of the New York 
Academy of Sciences, 1005. 
''Studies in Jewish Statistics, p. 80. 

282 



NEW YORK 283 

girth of the chest exceeds one-half of their stature. In the 
case of the Jews it is found that the girth equals or is 
less than half their height. This, with their poorly devel- 
oped muscular system and frequency of ansemia, gives 
them the appearance of sickly people. But considering the 
fact that for the last two thousand years they have mostly 
been town dwellers, and in the towns they have mostly 
inhabited the poorest districts in insanitary conditions, 
crowded in small, badly ventilated dwellings, as we learn 
from the histories of the various European Ghettos, it would 
be surprising if all these adverse conditions had not re- 
duced the physique of the Jews. 

Paradoxical though it may seem, the East Side Jews 
of New York City, notwithstanding their apparent physical 
inferiority externally are not inferior pathologically — 
they do not swell the mortality returns of the city ; in fact 
they enjoy an unprecedented longevity, far above most 
other non- Jewish races of the city. *' The Jew, particu- 
larly amid large Jewries of the East," says Leroy Beaulieu, 
'' is often small and puny — he looks wretched, sickly, 
shrunken and pale. But all this should not deceive us; 
under the frail exterior is concealed an intense vitality. 
The Jew may be likened to those lean actresses, the Rachels 
and Sarahs, v/ho spit blood and seem to have but a spark 
of life left, and yet who, when they have stepped upon the 
stage, put forth indomitable strength and energy. Life 
with them has hidden springs."^ 

On his arrival at New York, the Russian Jcav is con- 
fronted by sanitary conditions which are as foreign to him 
as the language of the country. It is of course quite diffi- 
cult for him to adapt himself to his new surroundings ; but 
my observations, which have been very extensive among the 
foreign population of New York, have convinced me that 
the Jew adapts himself to his new environment far more 
easily and more speedily than his neighbors, the Italians, 
the Bohemians, the Poles, the Scandinavians, and others. 

In New York the immigrant Jew is principally a dw^eller 
in the tenement house. Although scattered all over the city 
a large proportion of Russian Jews live on the East Side, 
south of Fourteenth Street and east of the Bowery; prin- 
cipally in the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth 
Wards. These wards enjoy the evil disinction of being the 

^Israel Among the Nations, p. 150. 



284 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

most densely populated spots in the United States, and 
probably on the earth. The Tenth Ward has over 700 per- 
sons to the acre, the Thirteenth about 600. They are over- 
crowded with tenement houses w^hich are known as '^ dou- 
ble-deckers," *' dumb-bell " tenements, a type of abode for 
human beings which New York has the unenviable reputa- 
tion of having invented. No other city in the United States 
has any such houses. Their characteristics, according to 
the report of the Tenement House Commission, are: (1) 
Insufficiency of air, light, and ventilation due to narrow 
courts or air-shafts; undue height, owing to the occupation 
by the building and adjacent buildings of too great a pro- 
portion of land area; (2) overcrowding; (3) danger in case 
of fire; (4) lack of separate water-closets and washing fa- 
cilities; (5) foul cellars and courts. 

A *' double-decker " is usually a building six to seven 
stories high, about twenty-five feet wide, and built upon a 
lot of the same width and about 100 feet deep. Each 
floor is usually divided into four sets of apartments, there 
being seven rooms on each side. The front apartments gen- 
erally consist of four rooms each, and the rear of three 
rooms each, making altogether fourteen rooms upon each 
floor, only four of which receive direct light and air from 
the street or from the small yard at the back of the build- 
ing. Of these four rooms only two are large enough to 
deserve the name of rooms. The front one is generally 
about 10 feet 6 inches wide by 11 feet 3 inches long ; this is 
used as a parlor. The next room is a kitchen, generally 
of the same size as the parlor, which receives its air and 
light from a window opening into the narrow * * air-shaft ' ' 
or such a supply which may come to it through the door 
opening into the front room. This room contains a range, 
a sink, and one or two glass-door closets for dishes. Behind 
these two rooms are two bed-rooms in the four-room apart- 
ments, or only one in the three-room apartments. The 
name of bed-room is applied to these holes by the landlords 
who charge rent for them, but in reality they are hardly 
more than closets, being each about 7 feet wide and 8 feet 
6 inches long. When a fair-sized bed is in position, there is 
'hardly left sufficient space for one to pass through the 
room. These rooms get no air or light whatever save such 
as comes from the window opening into the air-shaft, and 
with the exception of the highest stories are generally al- 
most totally dark. Water-closets are provided in the hall- 



NEW YORK 285 

way, one for two apartments or for two families. The vast 
majority of these " dumb-bells " contain no bath-rooms, 
though some of the latest models do contain a bath-tub in 
each apartment or one for the entire building — for about 
twenty-five families. 

The ventilation in these houses is obtained through the 
so-called air-shafts, which have been called by some witness 
before the Tenement House Commission " foul air shafts," 
'' culture tubes on a gigantic scale." Owing to its nar- 
rowness and its height, evidently the air-shaft cannot af- 
ford light to the rooms, particularly the bed-rooms, but 
only semi-darkness. The air that it does supply is foul, 
because it contains the air coming from the windows of the 
other apartments (there are as many as sixty windows 
opening in some of these air-shafts). Moreover, the air- 
shaft is used by some as a convenient receptacle for garbage 
and all sorts of refuse and indescribable filth thrown out of 
the windows, and this filth is often allowed to remain rot- 
ting at the bottom of the shaft for weeks without being 
cleaned out. In many houses this air-shaft is also used 
for the clothes lines, and on washing days the air and light 
are obstructed by the linens hung on these lines to dry. 

It will be observed that the ventilation of the houses in 
these tenements is reduced to a minimum. But there is an 
older kind of tenement house in the Jewish quarter of our 
city which is even inferior to the one just described. These 
houses have no air-shaft — and consequently no windows 
at all in the kitchens and bed-rooms — one sink for the 
supply of water in the hallway on each floor for four apart- 
ments, only one water-closet in the yard for all the sixteen 
to twenty-five families of the building, and have no gas 
fixtures, and the light at night is obtained from kerosene 
lamps. These inferior old tenements are inhabited chiefly 
by the very poor Jews, and almost invariably by the non- 
Jewish part of the Ghetto population. It is, in fact, re- 
markable how rarely the Irish, German, Bohemian, Italian 
and other Gentiles inhabit the new tenements in this dis- 
trict, which are therefore left almost exclusively to the 
Jews. As we shall see hereafter, this is because the Russian 
Jew's home is comparatively cleaner than that of his non- 
Jewish neighbors of the same social and financial status, 
and he therefore prefers to live in a house having a handy 
water supply, a water-closet, wash-tubs, a modern range, 
and the like. 



286 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

The number of persons to an apartment depends on the 
size of the family inhabiting it, on the financial and social 
condition of its members and on their personal habits. The 
better class live in three or four rooms. Considering that 
a family of the Ghetto consists on an average of six persons 
the better class require three or four rooms for every six 
persons. But the large majority of the East Side Jews are 
very poor, and cannot afford to pay ten to eighteen dollars 
rent per month; they therefore resort to lodgers to obtain 
part of their rent. In the four-room apartments, one bed- 
room is usually sublet to one or more, frequently to two 
men or women, and in many houses the front room is also 
sublet to two or more lodgers for sleeping purposes. The 
v/riter on many occasions while calling professionally at 
night at some of these houses, beheld a condition of affairs 
like this: A family consisting of husband, wife, and six 
to eight children whose ages range from less than one to 
twenty-five years each. The parents occupy the small bed- 
room, together with two, three or even four of the younger 
children. In the kitchen, on cots and on the floor, are 
the older children; in the front room two or more (in rare 
cases as many as five) lodgers sleep on the lounge, on the 
floor and on cots, and in the fourth bed-room two lodgers 
who do not care for the price charged, but who desire to 
have a '' separate room " to themselves. 

When we bear in mind that the Ghetto population is the 
poorest in the city and that the rents charged are the high- 
est, we are not surprised at the condition of affairs just 
described. It is only surprising that, in spite of such over- 
crowding, the Jews manage to be the healthiest and longest 
lived class of the population of Nev/ York City. 

Of the homes of the poor population of the city, the Jew- 
ish home is the cleanest. In the small three-room or four- 
room apartments, which a poor family inhabits, we find, as 
a rule, the largest, called the '' front room," covered with 
some oil cloth and rugs; sometimes, perhaps, with carpets; 
in the very poor houses the bare wooden floor is usually 
kept clean. The front room in tidy homes is kept closed, 
and the children are kept out of it the greater part of the 
day. Such a clean, tidy room for the reception of friends 
and guests, and for social purposes, is not seen in most of 
the homes of the other slum population. The second room, 
as we have seen above, is the kitchen, v/hich is also used as 
a dining-room at meal time, and as a sitting-room for the 



NEW YORK 287 

father, mother and children. The entrance to the house 
is through this kitchen, and outside visitors, beholding the 
entire family around the stove or table, and some of the 
children playing on the floor, gain the impression that 
the home of the Russian Jew is untidy and even filthy. 
But careful inspection of the contents of the room will show 
the contrary: The range is sparkling — the Russian Jew- 
ish woman takes great pride in the condition of the range. 
Where the landlord does not provide one, a Jewish woman 
will spend as much as $20 for a good range " with much 
nickel, ' ' and give hours of hard labor in cleaning and pol- 
ishing it daily. I have actually seen houses with a pitiful 
scarcity of furniture, but vv^ith ranges v/orth from $15 to 
$20. The sink, which in modern houses is also found in 
this room, is in the majority of cases kept as clean as in any 
home of the American family, and much cleaner than by 
people of other nationalities (for instance, Poles, Bohem- 
ians, Italians, etc.) of the same social status. The third, 
and in four-room apartments also the fourth room, is the 
bed-room — the contents are, as a rule, a large double-bed, 
and, if there are small children, a baby carriage or a small 
children's bed. The cleanliness of this room depends usu- 
ally on the readiness of the housekeeper to work and clean 
it of the vermin that are apt to be found in such dark, 
unventilated places. 

The personal cleanliness of the Russian Jew is far above 
that of the average slum population. The Russian baths 
are very numerous in the Jewish quarters, and very much 
frequented. ^' I cannot get along without a ' sweat ' (Rus- 
sian bath) at least once a week," many a Jew will tell you. 
On the days when these Russian baths admit only women, 
they are also crowded with women and children. During 
the summer, the public baths on the East River are crowded 
with Jewish people from daybreak till late in the evening. 
It is to be regretted that the city does not provide more of 
these baths. It must also be borne in mind that the re- 
ligious Jew cuts the nails of his fingers and toes at least 
once a week, because, according to the rabbinical teaching, 
dirt under the nails contains " devils " or *' evil spirits." 
Before each meal he must wash his hands, and repeat this 
operation immediately after meals, and must then also 
rinse his mouth ; and he must not walk four steps from his 
bed in the morning without careful ablution of his face and 
hands. A Jewish woman must visit a bath at least once 



288 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

a month; the nails of her fingers and toes mnst be cut off. 
These religious rites and customs are carefully observed 
by the older generation who are generally pious; the 
younger people, though they do not observe these rites re- 
ligiously, follow some of them. These religious rites are, 
in the opinion of modern sanitarians, highly conducive to 
the health and cleanliness of the Jews, and, as a matter of 
fact, the sanitary condition of the Jew's person and home 
is not inferior to that of any other race living under similar 
conditions of poverty, want and overcrowding. 

One reason for the impression of uncleanliness that the 
casual observer may obtain is the filthy streets in the New 
York Ghetto. This is due in great measure to the negli- 
gence of the city officials; they permit in the Jewish 
streets nuisances which would not be tolerated in any other 
quarter of the city; the street cleaning department clears 
the Ghetto only after it has cleaned the other streets. The 
residents have enough to care for the houses, which are 
overcrowded, and leave the streets to the city. But after 
all this, I can state, and I am convinced that I will be sus- 
tained by all who are justly entitled to an opinion, that 
even the streets in the New York Jewish quarter are as 
clean as those inhabited by the poor Italians, Bohemians 
and other immigrant populations. These other nationali- 
ties do very little marketing on the streets. They procure 
their groceries, dry goods, crockery, etc., in stores or mar- 
kets. The Jews generally buy most of their goods on the 
streets from push carts, stands, and the like. The reason 
for this is, probably, that the habit is very prevalent in 
Russia and Galicia, and they have brought it over from 
their old home ; besides, the Jew has somewhat of a mercan- 
tile nature — when he cannot satisfy this instinct on ac- 
count of his poverty by opening a store, he will at least sell 
from a push cart or do some peddling. Streets used as 
markets cannot be kept very clean. 

The food of the Russian Jews is considered to be above 
reproach. The meat consumed, as is well known, has, 
before being placed on sale, undergone a thorough inspec- 
tion as to the health of the animal killed. The meat is 
therefore more wholesome and more fit for human con- 
sumption than that in the average non-Jewish butcher 
shop. As we shall see hereafter, this has some influence 
on the liability of the Jew to tuberculosis. Moreover, the 
meat consumed by the Jew is fresh. Meat more than three 



NEW YORK 289 

days old is not kosher (ritiially clean), and in order that it 
may be made kosher it must be carefully rinsed in clean 
water. Religious butchers for this reason do not keep meat 
for more than a day or two. The same applies to fowls, 
such as chickens, turkeys, etc. Those sold in Jewish shops 
are fresh, and come from healthy animals. 

Fish is one of the most important articles in the diet of 
the Jew. Those who do not consume much of it must at 
least have fish for Friday night and for Saturday, and 
when fish is scarce a Jewess will pay a high price for at 
least one or two pounds of it for Sabbath. I am informed 
that the Jews consume proportionally more fish than any 
other race in New York. 

A very important article in the Jewish diet is herring. 
In very poor Jewish families, when other food cannot be 
procured, they can live for days on bread, herring, and tea 
alone. Potatoes, too, are much in vogue. With the excep- 
tion of horse-radish, carrots, cabbage, beets, and a few 
others, the Jews consume very few vegetables, although 
fruits of all varieties are very freely used. 

Another important fact is that the Jews do not eat much 

— a pound of meat per diem is sufficient for a poor family 
of a husband, wife and a few children. While this may be 
partly due to the expense — kosher meat is very expensive 

— still it is a fact that the well-to-do eat comparatively less 
than non-Jews. Gluttony is considered a sin among the 
Russian Jews. This trait has also been retained from 
Russia, where the multitude of the Jews are very poor, and 
food, particularly meat, is expensive, because of the special 
tax levied on kosher meat {takse). Jewish women gen- 
erally differ from the men in this respect. You will quite 
often meet a woman who likes to eat much and well. This, 
added to the fact that the Jewish women usually do noth- 
ing but housework after marriage, is probably the reason 
why obesity is more frequently met with among them than 
among non-Jewish women. 

It is well known that alcoholism is very rare among Jews, 
particularly those from Russia. It is even thought by 
many that Jews are total abstainers. Though this may be 
so with a small proportion, many Jews partake more or less 
of alcohol in its various forms, and those who do not or- 
dinarily drink, usually do so at least on Saturday and holi- 
days for religious purposes (kiddush) and on various other 
occasions. One thing must be conceded — Jews only rarely 



290 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

drink to*intoxication; living in the Jewish quarters of New 
York for ten years, I have seen a Jewish " drunk " only 
rarely, although in my practice as a physician, I have re- 
peatedly met with Jewish patients suffering from the ef- 
fects of chronic alcoholism as cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic 
gastritis, etc. One of the reasons why Jews are not seen 
in an intoxicated condition on the streets is because the 
Jew generally knows when to stop drinking, and when he is 
somewhat intoxicated, those near him will at once remove 
him to his home and will not permit him to behave boister- 
ously on the streets. An officer of the Society Chesed Shel 
Emeth, which has as one of its objects to give poor people 
Jewish burial, informed me that among the unclaimed Jew- 
ish dead in the New York morgue he has during more than 
one year's service met with only one case in which alcohol- 
ism was stated to be the cause of death, and this among 
an average of five to six corpses weekly (including chil- 
dren). When we recall the fact that the unclaimed bodies 
in the morgue almost invariably come from the lowest 
classes of society, and that at least seventy-five per cent, of 
the Gentile unclaimed dead in the morgue are directly or 
indirectly caused by alcoholism, we are the more surprised 
at the infrequency of alcoholism among the Jews in New 
York. But still it can positively be stated that the vice is 
growing in frequency among the Jews in New York City. 
We occasionally meet a Jewish patient in the alcoholic ward 
of Bellevue Hospital. In their old home in Russia, the 
Jews abhor a drunkard; they name him with converts and 
outcasts. To have a drunkard in the family means diffi- 
culty in contracting suitable marriages for the children. 
The Jew knows that it does not pay to be drunk. Having 
lived for centuries under the ceaseless ban of abuse and 
persecution in the European Ghettos, he has found it ad- 
vantageous to his well-being always to be sober. But here, 
alcoholism is increasing, particularly among the yoimg gen- 
eration, who are adapting the habits and customs of life 
of their gentile neighbors — their virtues as well as their 
vices. 

The Russian Jews are generally inveterate smokers of 
cigarettes; only few, those who are more or less " Ameri- 
canized," smoke cigars. The Russian Jews prefer ciga- 
rettes with mouth-pieces, such as they were wont to smoke 
in their old home. Others smoke cigarettes which they 
roll very dexterously with their fingers from tobacco in 



NEW YOBK 291 

cigarette paper. Pipes are not very common. Another 
habit of the older people is snuffing pulverized tobacco. 
Chewing tobacco is unknov/n among Russian Jews. 

Tea is probably consumed by Russian Jews far more than 
by any other nationality living in New York. We fre- 
quently see one who drinks more than a dozen glasses of 
this beverage daily. In the cafes of the Ghetto one may 
always observe people sitting for hours and drinking tea. 
This habit has been acquired in Russia, where excessive 
tea drinking is common. One advantage of the tea drunk 
b}^ the Russian JeAvs over that consumed by the Americans 
is the fact that the Russians never drink tea that has been 
boiled ; they make of the tea an infusion with boiling water ; 
the amount of tannin retained is thereby reduced to a 
minimum, and it is consequently less liable to cause indiges- 
tion, and only the volatile oil which gives the aroma is 
extracted. 

Considering the fact that the Jews are the most nervous 
of people, as we shall see hereafter, it is not surprising that 
they consume much tea. Having their nervous system 
often fatigued and exhausted from worry, care and anxiety, 
they require some agreeable stimulant which will remove, at 
least temporarily, the sense of fatigue, and give a feeling 
of well-being. Other nations use alcohol for such purposes, 
but the Jews prefer tea, which in the long run, of course, 
overstimulates their nervous system, and a depression is the 
result, which requires larger doses of tea to overcome it. 
A vicious circle is thereby established, v/hich by no means 
contributes to the health and well-being of the Russian Jew. 

Coffee is used by the Jews in Russia only rarely. Here 
in the United States it is more frequently consumed, but 
not so freely as tea. Drug habits, such as the use of opium, 
chloral, cocaine, etc., are almost unknown among the Rus- 
sian Jews. 

While speaking of the evils of the New York tenement 
houses, the various Tenement House Commissions were al- 
ways wont to point out that the mortality in the tenements 
is considerably higher than that of the private dwellings. 
They succeeded in obtaining from the vital statistics of the 
city figures showing that the mortality in some wards was 
between two and five times higher than that in the wards 
without, or with few, tenement houses. But on careful 
analysis it was discovered that the wards which enjoy the 
lowest mortality of the other wards in New York are most 



292 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

densely populated spots in the city, overcrowded with tene- 
ments, each of which affords a dwelling place for between 
200 and 400 human beings. 

The wards showing the lowest mortality in Greater New 
York are those inhabited by the Russian Jews. The wards 
showing the highest death rates are inhabited chiefly by 
Italians, Irish, Bohemians, etc., and with none or only few 
Jews. *' In certain blocks in the Italian quarter of the 
city there is a very high death rate, ' ' says the Report of the 
Tenement House Commission of 1900,^ '' while in certain 
other blocks only half a mile away, in the Jewish quarter, 
the death rate is only one-half as great as the average death 
rate of the city ; yet in the latter district there was a greater 
population, the tenement houses were taller, and the gen- 
eral sanitary conditions were worse." 

In fact, when we observe the comparative death rates of 
the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth Wards, which 
are chiefly inhabited by Jews,^ we find that during 1899 the 
death rate per 1,000 population was : In the Seventh Ward 
18.16 ; in the Tenth, 14.23 ; in the Eleventh, 16.78, and in 
the Thirteenth, 14.52; for New York City the death rate 
was, in the same year, 18.53 per 1,000. It will be observed 
that the Seventh Ward had the highest death rate of the 
Jewish districts, 18.16, nearly approaching that of the city. 
But considering that in this ward the non-Jewish, particu- 
larly the Irish population, makes up at least 35 per cent, 
of the total, we must conclude that the mortality of the Jews 
in this district is also lower than the average of the city. 

When we recall that the death rate in New York City 
was in 1880, 26.40 per 1,000 of population, and that ever 
since it has been with slight fluctuations, steadily declining, 
we may find that, possibly, there may be some correspond- 
ence between this reduction of mortality in the city and the 
steady influx of Jewish immigrants. While the activity of 
the Board of Health towards the lowering of the death 
rates of the city is evident, still the thousands of Jews with 
their low mortality may also have contributed somewhat to 
this effect. 

The low mortality of the immigrant Jewish population in 
New York City was noticed in the report compiled by Dr. 
John S. Billings, for the Eleventh Census of the United 

^ De Forest & Veiller, The Tenement House Problem, Vol. 1, p. 55. 

2 It is estimated that over 75 per cent, of the population in these wards are 
Jews — the Tenth and the Thirteenth almost exclusively, the Eleventh with at 
least 80 per cent., and the Seventh 65 per cent. 



NEW YORK 293 

States.^ According to these statistics the Russian and 
Polish Jews showed the lowest rates of mortality in New 
York during the five years ending May 31st, 1890. The 
highest mortality rate — 43.57, was found to be among the 
Bohemians ; the Italians are next, with 35.29 ; the Irish, with 
32.51, etc., while those whose mothers were born in Russia 
and Poland enjoyed the lowest mortality rates — only 14.85. 
The mortality of children was also the lowest among the 
Russian Jews — only 28.67 per 1,000 population, as against 
82.57 among the Bohemians, 76.41 among the Italians, and 
so on. Y\f. Z. Ripley,- in speaking of the longevity of the 
Jews, aptly illustrates it by the following example : * ' Sup- 
pose two groups of one hundred infants each, one Jewish, 
one of the average American parentage (Massachusetts), to 
be born on the same day. In spite of all the disparity of 
social conditions in favor of the latter, the chances, deter- 
mined by statistical means, are that one-half of the Ameri- 
can will die within forty-seven years; while the first half 
of the Jews will not succumb to disease or accident before 
the expiration of seventy-one years. The death rate is but 
little over one-half of the average American population. 
This holds good in infancy and in middle age.'' 

The longevity of the Jews has always appeared paradoxi- 
cal to those who have investigated the question. As we 
have seen above, the Jew is by external appearances the 
least physically developed of the European nations; in 
stature he is the shortest, the girth of his chest is the nar- 
rowest, he is paler and poorer in blood than most of the 
non-Jewish nations among whom he lives. But his long- 
evity and resistance to disease surpasses those of his ap- 
parently stronger neighbor. The cause of this paradox is 
plain when we consider the Jew's history. The Jewish race 
has, for the last two thousand years, spread widely over the 
face of the earth. During all his migrations from conti- 
nent to continent and from country to country, the Jew 
was always exposed physically and mentally to the most 
diversified conditions. The variety of climate, the re- 
peated changes of habits and attempts at acclimatization 
have wrought great changes in his physical organization. 
His struggles against adverse circumstances, endeavoring to 
readjust his organism in adaptation to new conditions, 
defending himself against his mediaeval x3ersecutors who 

1 Vital Sfatistics of Nezv York City and Brooklyn, p. 15, 

2 The Races of Europe, p. 383, 



294 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

mercilessly gloated over his agonies, torturing liim with a 
fiendish glee of hate and intolerance, have left him a physi- 
cal wreck as far as external appearance is concerned. 
But on the other hand, these inimical conditions have 
also had other effects on the Jew's organization. 
Partly by weeding out, either by death or bap- 
tism, all those of the Jews who, by reason of physical, 
mental and intellectual inferiority, could not withstand the 
ban of poverty, abuse, and persecution, and partly by 
keenly sharpening the senses, and by developing the 
functional activity of the brains of those who were suffi- 
ciently brave, stulDborn enough to remain Jews in the face 
of that brutal persecution, natural selection has left behind 
a race which is at present fully equipped with means to re- 
sist poverty, misfortune, and even death more easily than 
other races who have had no such struggle for their exist- 
ence. Only those most resistant to the effects of disease, the 
healthiest who could easily adapt and acclimatize them- 
selves to new external conditions on short notice, — in brief, 
only the fittest have survived. At one period of their his- 
tory they had to withstand the effects of contagious 
diseases, all those predisposed, the weak, sickly and infirm, 
succumbed, and those left behind were more or less immune. 
This inununity was transmitted to future generations. At 
another period of their history, intelligence and intellect 
were the best weapons for the preservation of the race in 
the struggle against persecution, and only those who 
possessed the most intelligence and knowledge and the 
toughest, the shrewdest, who were best fitted to cope 
with the adverse circumstances, survived; the weak- i 
est, the most stupid and the most ignorant, went / 
to the wall. These qualities were inherited by the sue-^' 
ceeding generations. The final result is that the Jews 
at present are a picked race which can resist pain, 
misfortune, grief, worry, starvation, disease, and even death 
better than other civilized races. Those who were shiftless, 
immoral, lazy, incorrigible, drunkards, could not remain 
Jews under the medieval persecutions. Only those who 
were strong, healthy, and energetic could venture to remain 
Jews — hence their longevity. 

Of the diseases to which Jews are most liable those of the 
nervous system stand out most prominently. Neurasthenia 
and hysteria are more frequent among them than among 
any other race. Some physicians have even gone so far as 



NEW YORK 295 

to state that the vast majority of the Jews are neurasthen- 
ics, and that nearly all the women are hysterical. The ob- 
servations of the physicians who practice among the Rus- 
sian Jews in New York sustain these contentions. Hysteria 
is very frequent among women, and among men is far more 
often met with in Jews than among any other people. 

Insanity is very frequent among the Jews. It appears 
that it was very frequent among the ancient Hebrews. At 
present we find, wherever statistics on the subject are avail- 
able, that the Jews suffer proportionately from two to five 
times more frequently from mental alienation than non- 
Jews. Here in New York City we meet with similar condi- 
tions. Recent statistics show that the Jev/s in this city sup- 
ply a greater number of insane to the asylums than any 
other race living here.^ The same can be observed in the 
asylums for idiotic and feeble-minded children of our city. 
It is stated on good authority that more than fifty per cent, 
of the inmates are of Jewish origin. Remembering that the 
Jews constitute less than twenty per cent, of the total popu- 
lation of Greater New York, we can appreciate the fearful 
proportion of insanity and idiocy among the Jews. 

A disease of which the Jews suffer more than any other 
nationality is diabetes. Dr. Heinrich Stern^ examined care- 
fully the mortality from diabetes in New York City during 
1899, and found that out of a total of 202 deaths due to this 
cause, fifty- four, i. e., twenty-five per cent., occurred among 
the Jews. And as the Jewish population of New York City 
is scarcely tv/enty per cent, of the total population, it fol- 
lows that the Jews suffer about three times more often than 
others from diabetes.^ Varicose veins, hemorrhoids, rup- 
tures and some form of diseases of the nervous system are 
also more frequent among Jews than non-Jews. 

The greater liability of the Jews to nervous diseases, par- 
ticularly neurasthenia, hysteria, and diabetes is to be con- 
sidered as the outcome of a long series of events in the Jews ' 
history for the last two thousand years. It is a result of 
the anxiety, prolonged worry, grief, and cerebral overwork 
of the Jews under the ban of medieval persecution. These 
diseases, as we all know, are diseases of great urban centres, 
and they signify that the organism of their possessor has 

^ See articles " Idiocy " and " Insanity," by the author, Jewish Encyclopedia, 
Vol. VI. 

- Medical Record, November 17, 1900. 

^ For a more thorough discussion of the subject, see article " Diabetes," by 
the author, Jezvish Encyclopedia, \''oI. V. 



296 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

entered on a race of competition for which it is not ade- 
quately equipped. The Jew has been for centuries an urban 
resident. According to Jacobs, four-fifths of the Jewish 
population live in large towns.^ The diseases of the city 
population are therefore accentuated in the body and mind 
of the Jew. Of non-Jews onlj^ one-third of the population 
are town-dwellers; and the case is consequently different 
with them. It has been shown by Mr. Cantlie, in his book, 
*' Degeneration Amongst Londoners," that the London 
poor do not survive beyond three, or at most, four genera- 
tions; the same has been proved to be the fate of the poor 
inhabitants of Paris. It is, indeed, rare to find among the 
poor in modern large cities families which could trace their 
ancestors back for five or six generations as city dwellers. 
The population of the cities is kept up by the constant 
influx of good, pure, fresh blood from the country, which 
counteracts the deteriorating influences of the busy, ener- 
vating city life. Dr. Otto Ammon has conclusively shown 
that the large majority of the town-dwellers in Baden, Ger- 
many, are either themselves immigrants from the country 
or else the children of immigrants. The same has been 
shown to be true of nearly all the other cities in Germany — 
nearly one-half their population is of direct country 
descent. One-third of the population in London is of coun- 
try birth; the same is true of Paris. For thirty of the 
principal cities of Europe, according to Eipley, it has been 
calculated that only about one-half of their increase is from 
the loins of their own people, the overwhelming majority 
being of country birth. The Jews have not had this ad- 
vantage of draining the pure, fresh, healthy country blood 
for the rejuvenation of their own, which is deteriorated by 
town-dwelling, and as a result we find that the evil effects 
of the strained, nerve-shattering city life have been deeply 
rooted in their bodies and minds, and this in turn has been 
transmitted to their offspring. With each new generation 
the nervous vitality of the Jewish race lessened, and as a 
final result, we find that most of the diseases that increase 
with the advance of civilization, particularly the neuroses 
and psychoses and also diabetes, are relatively more fre- 
quent among the Jews than among the non-Jews. '' The 
Jew, ' ' says Leroy Beaulieu,^ ' ' is the most nervous and in so 
far the most modern of men. He is, by the very nature of 

* " Anthropology," Jexvish Encyclopedia, Vol. I. 
^Israel Among the Nations, p. 109, 



NEW YOBK 297 

his diseases, the forerunner of his contemporaries, preceding 
them on that perilous path upon which society is urged by 
the excesses of its intellectual and emotional life, and by the 
increasing spur of competition. The noisy army of psycho- 
pathies and neuropathies is gaining so many recruits among 
us that it will not take the Christians long to catch up with 
the Jews in this respect. ' ' 

Consanguineous marriages, which are very frequent 
among the Jews, have been assigned as a most potent cause 
of their nervousness and also of the frequency of diabetes 
among them. I do not believe that this is a satisfactory ex- 
planation. Modern medical science teaches that consan- 
guineous marriages between healthy people, per se, do not 
cause any disease or infirmity in the offspring — except- 
ing those, of course, which are contracted between diseased 
people. 

A very important factor in the production of the nerv- 
ousness of the Jews is that they are essentially a commer- 
cial people — many prefer speculation in business pursuits 
to manual labor. This can be observed in New York City, 
where a number of Jewish laborers, after having succeeded 
in saving a few dollars, begin business on a small scale ; they 
peddle or sell from push-carts, stands and small stores. 

Business, particularly that done with lack of funds, in- 
volves prolonged morbid emotional excitement, such as 
worry, vexation, grief, and anxiety ; and the importance of 
these as factors in brain exhaustion cannot be over- 
estimated. The Russian Jew, again, as we have seen, is 
under-fed, emaciated and anemic. The disproportion be- 
tween his mental activity on the one hand, and his lack of 
physical development on the other, are added to the fact 
that he comes into this world already handicapped; the 
nervous vitality of his parents has also been more or less 
affected by the same causes and an additional very potent 
cause of nervous exhaustion, persecution, which has strained 
and shattered them physically and emotionally. All these 
factors taken together give us more than suf^cient reason 
to expect nervousness among the Russian Jews. 

The education of the Russian Jews in their old homes is 
acquired in the so-called cheder, at an early age. At four 
or five years a Jewish child attends school, and studies ar- 
dently the Hebrew language. Between seven and ten years 
he studies the Bible, and in instances the Talmud. The 
Jp.wish schools in Russia, the chedarim, are anything but 



298 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

conducive to the healthy functional development of the 
young children's nervous s^^stem and bodily activity. 

If we bear in mind further that systematic exercises, such 
as billiards, golf, tennis, hunting, gymnastics are not in 
vogue at all among immigrant Jews, we have the picture 
complete — the restless, overworked and exhausted nervous 
system gets no recreation, and breaks down under the 
slightest provocation. 

Suicide has been observed to be infrequent among the 
Jews in Eastern Europe, but in New York City it appears 
to be growing among them. We have no exact statistics as 
to its proportion, but the fact is, we hear of Jewish suicides 
quite often. Here again we see the effects of modern 
civilization on the Jew.^ 

By immunity is understood the resistance of the tissues 
of the system to the development of infectious diseases. It 
has only a relative meaning, because there is no absolute 
immunity. A¥hen we say that a race is immune to a cer- 
tain disease, as the negro is, for instance, to yellow fever, we 
do not mean to convey the idea that the negro never suffers 
from that disease, but that he is affected less frequently 
than the white races are, or only rarely. Using the term 
immunity in this sense, I can positively state that the Jews 
in New York are relatively immune to most of the infectious 
diseases. I make this statement with the full loiowledge 
that most of those who have not made a special study of 
the mortality from contagious diseases in New York have 
always entertained a decidedly contrary opinion. But I 
think that a careful analysis of the statistics given below, 
will convince all skeptics as to the truth of the assertion. 

As we have seen above, there are four wards in New 
York City which are chiefly inhabited by Jev/s — namely 
the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth. At least 75 
per cent, of the people living in these wards are Jews. By 
computing the mortality from infectious diseases in these 
wards as they are recorded in the annual reports of the 
Board of Health, we can easily see if the Jews have a lower 

^ It is worthy of notice that the same phenomenon has been observed among 
the Jev/s in Western Europe: About fifty years ago it was very rare to meet 
a Jewish suicide. At present the number of Jews who commit suicide has 
increased to an alarming extent. Thus the latest statistics for Prussia show 
that self destruction is more frequent among the Jews than among the Chris- 
tians; from 1893 to 1897 there occurred among the Christians 31.17 male and 
8.02 female suicides per 100,000 population. Among the Jews the proportion 
was 36.50 male and 11.89 females per 100,000. (Arthur Rupin, Die Socialen 
Verhaeltnisse der Juden in Pretissen xind Deutschland. Berlin, 1902). 



NEW YORK 299 

mortality from these diseases. An analysis of these figures 
shows that diphtheria and cronp killed in New York during 
1897, 1898 and 1899, 64.20 per 100,000 population, and of 
Jews in the four wards referred to only 59.55. Scarlet 
fever and measles appear to have been the exceptions, the 
former being for the city only 24.17 and for the Jews 34.14 
per 100,000, the latter showing 21.69 and 21.15 respectively. 
In Dr. Billings' report on Vital Statistics of New York City 
and Brooklyn, published by the Eleventh Census of the 
United States, there is given the mortality from certain 
diseases of the various races and nationalities confirming 
these figures. I have assumed the figures in this report 
which refer to Russians as applying to Russian Jews, as 
these are the greater part classified under the nationality 
in these cities. 

Diarrhoeal diseases are also less fatal among the 'Jews. 
Every year we hear that when philanthropists are clamor- 
ing about the great mortality of children from diarrhoeal 
diseases during the summer months, they point to the con- 
gested tenement districts inhabited by the Jews as being 
the stronghold of the scourge. If they had studied the ques- 
tion more closely, they would have ascertained that the Jews 
in the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth Wards have 
a lower mortality from this disease than any other national- 
ity — the average annual mortality in New York City dur- 
ing 1897, 1898 and 1899 was 125.54 per 100,000 population. 
Among the Jews in the four wards mentioned only 106.79. 
For the six years ending May 31st, 1890, the mortality fori 
New York from diarrhoeal diseases was 316.85 ; among the 
Bohemians, 766.73 ; Italians, 425.58 ; United States, white, 
398.34, and among the Russian and Polish Jews only 195.55. 
The same is true of typhoid fever. It is proportionately 
less frequent in the East than in the West Side of the city. 

The mortality from diseases of the nervous system among 
the Russian Jews of New York during six years ending May 
31st, 1890, as given in the Eleventh Census was 117.68, as 
against 336.76 among the Bohemians, 293.48 white Ameri- 
cans, 242.44 Irish, and so on.^ This is contrary to the opin- 
ion of many demographers v/ho consider the Jews the 
greatest sufferers from nervous diseases. But if we bear in 
mind the fact brought out by the author while speaking of 
the nervousness of the Jews that * * only the functional nerv- 

^ Billings, Vital Statistics of New York City and Brooklyn, p. 41. 



300 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

oils diseases, as hysteria and neurasthenia, are more preva- 
lent among the Jews, while the organic degenerative nervous 
diseases are even less frequently met with among them,'* 
we are not surprised at the low mortality from this cause 
among the Jews of Russia and Poland in New York. 

Of the venereal diseases, such as syphilis, the Jews ap- 
pear to suffer less frequently than other races. Many 
writers in Russia have recorded statistics to that effect. 
We have no exact statistics about the prevalence of syphilis 
and gonorrhea among the Jews in New York, but the tes- 
timony of physicians practicing among them shows that 
while among the Jews syphilis is often met with, it is not 
so frequently encountered as among non-Jews. Gonorrhea 
seems at present to be very much on the increase among 
the Jews in the East Side of New York, which again shows 
the effects of their sojourn in our metropolis. 

The most important disease to which the Jews show a 
relative immunity is tuberculosis, or, as it is commonly 
known, consumption. The author of this article has shown 
this to be a fact among the immigrant Jewish population 
in New York City in his paper on the '* Relative Infre- 
quency of Tuberculosis Among Jews," to which the reader 
is referred for details.^ One fact we desire to emphasize 
here, namely that consumption is very much on the in- 
crease among our population on the East Side, particular- 
ly among the poorer classes of the Jews living in New 
York City. Dr. Lee K. Frankel, manager of the United 
Hebrew Charities, has shown that, while in 1895 the ratio 
of consumptive applicants for relief was 2 per cent., in 
1899 it reached 3 per cent. ; i. e., that is, an increase of 50 
per cent, in four years, which is appalling. Dr. Frankel 
also shows that consumption as it exists among the Jews 
in New York is almost wholly confined to the lower classes, 
the poorer element of the Jewish population, and that the 
foreigners who suffer from this disease have contracted it 
after their arrival in the United States. He bases his de- 
duction on an examination of 10,000 death certificates in 
the New York City Board of Health, beginning with Jan- 
uary 1st, 1900. In 888 of these the cause of death was 
stated to be tuberculosis; 72 of these were Jews. If we 
recall the fact that the Jewish population of New York 
City is estimated to be at least 15 per cent, of the total 

^ American Medicine, November 2, 1901. See, also, article " Consumption^" 
Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IV. 



NEW YORK 301 

population, we may from Dr. Frankel's figures, also find 
that if consumption was as prevalent among the Jews as 
among the general population, the number of deaths due 
to this cause should have been 133. As it is, only 72 were 
recorded, a little over one-half that of the population of 
the city. We also find from Dr. Frankel's figures that of 
the 72 Jews who died of consumption, 39 died in tenement 
houses, 23 in institutions and only 1 in a private house. 
This tends to shov/ that those Jews who are socially and 
economically on a higher plane, are even less liable to con- 
sumption than the unfortunate poor who are huddled to- 
gether in congested tenements, in poverty and in want, 
exposed to infection to the highest degree. It can be posi- 
tively stated that in case the conditions of over-crowding 
and misery among the immigrant Jewish population on the 
East Side shall keep on as they are at present, the Jews 
living here will in the near future show a yet greater 
mortality from the *' white plague " than the Irish and 
Italians do at present. 

The low mortality of the New York Jews from the con- 
tagious diseases is the more remarkable when we bear in 
mind that everything that is conducive to the spread of 
infection is at hand in the East Side — poverty, overwork, 
ill-ventilated sweat-shops, overcrowding in the tenements, 
lack of fresh air and sunshine — in fact, the New York 
Ghetto is considered the most densely populated spot on 
earth. When we remember that, in spite of all these ad- 
verse conditions, the Jews show a lower mortality from 
contagious diseases, we are forced to conclude that they 
do possess some relative immunity or a greater power of 
resistance to the noxious effects of contagious diseases. 

The causes of this relative immunity of the Jews are to 
be sought in their past history, their religious customs and 
habits of life; to their devotion as husbands, as wives, as 
parents and as children. Although the nervous system 
of the Jews is more or less shattered as a result of the 
ceaseless persecution, abuse and oppression they have un- 
dergone for centuries, still the organic nervous diseases are 
infrequent among them — the reason for this is plainly 
evident — and alcohol and syphilis are also infrequent. 
We know that any poison that depresses the vitality of the 
system, as alcoholism and syphilis, predisposes infection 
by pathogenic micro-organisms. Pneumonia, consiunption 
and many other fatal diseases have alcoholism as a remote 



302 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

cause of their origin. The Jev/s, not being addicted to alco- 
holism, ate consequently less freqnentl}^ affected by these 
diseases. Another important point is the fact that the 
prognosis of most of the infectious diseases depends on 
the patients' antecedents. A mild attack of disease in an 
alcoholic is more liable to kill than a severe case in a tem- 
perate man. The vitality of the offspring also depends 
very much on the presence or absence of alcoholism and 
syphilis in the parents. Children begotten of parents suf- 
fering from these virulent poisons are easy prey to the 
infectious diseases. The Jewish children show a lower 
mortality, because their parents bestow on them a vitality 
untainted by alcoholism and syphilis, and they can there- 
fore more easily resist the effects of contagious diseases. 
Jewish parents are also more devoted to their children than 
others, their anxiety in case of slight illness is greater than 
that of poor people of other races, and they seek medical 
assistance far more frequently. Added to this fact, that' 
Jewish women do not after marriage work in factories as 
frequently as poor women of other nationalities and have 
more time to attend to their children, and we have all the 
factors that reduce the mortality, particularly of infants. 

The lesser mortality of the Jews from consumption is ex- 
plained by the above factors, and an additional very im- 
portant religious rite — the inspection of carcasses in the 
slaughter-house as to the health of the cattle. The Jew is 
prohibited from consuming meat coming from diseased cat- 
tle, particularly such which have suffered from diseases 
of the lungs and pleura. We know that a great proportion 
of the tuberculosis has its origin in the consumption of 
meat coming from tubercular cattle. In the ease of the 
Jews the chances of infection from this source are reduced 
to a minimum. 

To the cleanliness of the Jewish home from the moral 
and sanitary point of view we must ascribe most of the 
health, longevity, and immunities of the Jews. "When the 
Jew assimilates with his non- Jewish neighbors, adopting 
their modes of life and habits, he gradually loses his im- 
munity and his longevity, and in time does not differ as to 
health and sanitation from the people among whom he 
happens to live. 

It is agreed that the immigration of sober, healthy, and 
industrious people to the United States is desirable, and in 
view of all the facts we have collected, the Russian Jew is 



NEW YORK 303 

as desirable as any other class of foreigners and better 
than many. We all know that notwithstanding the fact 
that the Russian Jew comes from a country where typhus 
and smallpox are endemic and cholera quite often rages 
epidemically, he has never brought these diseases with 
him; even during 1891-1894, when cholera was raging in 
Russia, the numerous Jewish immigrants did not import 
the disease to the United States. 

The fact that they are not addicted to alcoholism is also 
one of the most important qualities that make the Russian 
Jew a desirable immigrant. Those few insanitary habits 
which he acquired in Russia the Jew does his best to for- 
get after living a longer time in the United States. And 
as his children attend public school almost invariably, we 
are convinced that the generation which will succeed the 
Russian Jews of to-day will prove to be good Americans 
morally, physically, and intellectually. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

It is well recognized that housing conditions in Phila- 
delphia are different from those in other large cities, and 
that whatever the evils, we do not have to contend with 
the evils of the tenement. However, it will not do for 
Philadelphians to gloat over the fortunate situation which 
has enabled so many working-men of the city to live in 
their own little homes, sometimes under their own " vine 
and fig-tree," for we, too, have evils which call for rem- 
edy; we have allowed congestion among our foreign popu- 
lations ; we have permitted bad housing to grow up ; we 
have failed to make and to enforce regulations which pre- 
vent sickness and disease and contagion; and, through 
negligence, the City of Philadelphia has problems which 
it should have coped with ere they rose to large dimen- 
sions. 

A little study of housing conditions in the southeastern 
section of the city was made in the spring of 1902 under 
the auspices of the Octavia Hill Association. The writer 
had the pleasure of taking part in the investigation, the 
entire results of Vv'-hich were placed at his disposal. 

The five wards of the district to which attention was 
given, the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh, con- 
tain about one-eighth of the population of the city and 
cover about one-fiftieth of the area. The average density 
of the most thickly populated ward, the Third, is 209 per- 
sons per acre.^ The average density for the entire city 
is 14 persons to the acre. It is therefore evident that we 
are dealing with a congested portion of the city. 

I shall take up the figures of the Jewish block, among the 
three examined in the investigation referred to, the other 
two being Italian and negro blocks respectively, — so de- 
nominated because the greater part of the inhabitants are 
of the particular class. In the Jewish block. Third to 
Fourth Street, South to Bainbridge Street, I have noted 
75 houses occupied by Jews; 9 on Third Street, 13 on 

» Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1902, p. 111. 

304 



PHILADELPHIA 305 

Fourth Street, 13 on South Street, 23 on Kater Street, 3 
on Orianna Street, and 14 on Bainbridge Street. This is, 
in many respects, a good illustrative block for our purpose, 
representing as it does several elements, from the economic 
standpoint. On South Street, there are stores where all 
sorts of goods may be purchased; it is a regular retail 
street. Third and Fourth Streets are likewise occupied 
by shop-keepers. Bainbridge Street contains old clothes 
and second-hand shops. In the upper stories of these 
buildings, those portions not occupied by the store-keeper 
are rented to tenants, whose occupations are tailoring, 
peddling and the like. The residents of the smaller streets, 
Orianna and Kater, and the upper floors of the buildings 
of the main streets are a poorer class than the merchants 
of South Street and the shop-keepers of Third and Fourth 
Streets. 

Let us take up for examination one of the small streets 
of the block and ascertain the condition with reference to 
housing. On Kater Street we have a record of 23 houses 
with Jewish families. There were among them 9 tailors, 
3 peddlers, 1 huckster, 1 shirtmaker, 1 paper-hanger. This 
is sufficient to give some idea of the economic position of 
the inhabitants. The average rental per house was $15.04 
per month. This is equal to $8.06 for each family, as there 
were 40 families in the 23 houses. There are thus an aver- 
age of 1% families to the house. The total number of per- 
sons in these houses was 299 — 197 adults and 102 children 
(under 14 years of age). This is an average of about 5 
to a family, and 8.65 persons to a house. The houses aver- 
age three stories each, or 5.83 rooms each, there being alto- 
gether 134 rooms. The result is that there were 1.48 per- 
sons to each room, a condition of crowding not only from a 
Philadelphia point of view, but from that of congestion 
generally. It is a larger number than was found in an in- 
vestigation in three similar districts in Chicago, where the 
average was 1.28. It must be admitted, however, that a 
comparison based on the number of persons to a dwelling 
does not show a bad state of affairs for this population 
contrasted with the average of the population in some of 
the large cities. In Philadelphia the number of persons 
in 1900, according to the Twelfth United States Census, 
was 5.4. In Baltimore the average number was 5.7, in St. 
Louis 7, in Boston 8.4, in Chicago 8.8, in Brooklyn 10.2, in 
the boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx (of. Greater New 



306 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

York) 20.4. But we are justified in making compari- 
son with congested sections, for our purpose.^ 

Of course, to make the comparison absolutely accurate 
as a basis for sanitary and health conditions we should 
have to take into consideration the number of cubic feet 
in the rooms, the surroundings of each, and the like, but it 
is sufficient here to bring out the fact that a state of crowd- 
ing exists. 

Belonging to the 23 houses on Kater Street there were 
22 water closets and 5 privies. This is an average of 1.17 
to a house, or .67 to a family, or, to put the fact in another 
Avay, 7 adults and children had the use of one water-closet 
or privy. 

The total number of bath-tubs in these 23 houses was 2, 
of which one is used only in the summer time. 

Twelve of the 23 houses had as their sole water accom- 
modation one hydrant each, in the yard. Three additional 
houses had a total of one hydrant for common use. Two 
others had one hydrant in common. Thus there is a to- 
tal of 14 hydrants for 17 houses occupied by 20 families 
composed of 102 persons, an average of more than 7 per- 
sons (adults and children) to one hydrant for washing 
clothes and persons. The other 20 families had altogether 
20 faucets. 

These statements show housing conditions in a poor 
street, merely from the standpoint of the barest and most 
ordinary health and sanitary accommodation. 

"When one considers that comfortable houses with good 
accommodations can be found in other sections of the city 
at $15 per month, it is a fair inference that the landlord 
profits by a condition of affairs which permits bad hous- 
ing; that, in any event, the tenant does not obtain a good 
return for his rental as compared with other sections. 

Now, taking in the entire block, as regards the 75 houses 
containing Jewish residents, we find that the total number 
of persons was 688 — 372 adults and 316 children. These 
represent 142 families. As there were 496 rooms in these 
houses, the average number of rooms per house was 6.6. 
The average number of persons to the room was 1.39, a 
condition of crov/ding above that quoted for Chicago.^ 
As the total number of families in these 75 houses was 142, 

1 Tenement Conditions in Chicago, p. 64. Of the three Chicago districts one 
is composed of Italian and Jewish residents and the average in this was 1.26 
persons per room. 

2 Tenement Conditions in Chicago, p. 64. 



PHILADELPHIA 307 

the average of families to the house was 1.9, and as the 
total number of persons was 688, the average was 9.17 per- 
sons to the house. This is considerably more than the aver- 
age for the city at large (which is but 5.4 persons to the 
house). It is also more than the average in the three dis- 
tricts in Philadelphia which were studied. Their average 
was 7.55. The average for the Italian block was 9.88 and 
for the negro 5.73. It will be seen that the crowding in 
the Italian block is the greatest. 

In this block in the 75 houses there were 86 water closets 
and 22 privies, making a total of 108, an average of 1.46 to 
a house, or 1.31 to a family, that is, 6.4 had the use of one 
water closet or privy. As to quality, some of these closets 
and privies are reported as being in bad condition, which 
may mean not kept cleanly, insufficient flush of water, so 
arranged as not to allow of the exhalation of gaseous 
odors, and the like. Though something may in instances 
be due to the carelessness of tenants, many faults which 
affect the permanent health of the community are due to 
the landlords in not providing adequate and approved 
appliances. 

There were in the 75 houses altogether 8 bath tubs, of 
which 3 were used only in the summer. This is an average 
of about 86 persons to a tub. 

Such a condition, on its face, bespeaks a failure to ap- 
preciate the value of the bath. It should be understood, 
however, that the public bath is often patronized in the ab- 
sence of a home bath. There are five private bathing es- 
tablishments down-town conducted by Jews and patronized 
almost entirely by the Jewish population of this section. 
They have the ordinary bath and the Russian or sweat-bath 
— somewhat similar in principle to the Turkish bath. The 
superintendent of the Public Baths Association at Gaskill 
Street above Fourth, informs me that about 40 per cent. 
of the establishment there are Jews. Then, too, the public 
baths of the city are patronized to a considerable extent. 

It appears, therefore, that there is more use of bathing 
facilities than the absence of bath tubs in the houses indi- 
cates. At the same time, it seems that the population needs 
considerable education in the use of water for the body. 
The habits of Russia and cold climates, where there was 
less need for the bath, must be adapted to the at times 
heated atmosphere of America and to the modern notions 
of frequent bathing of the body as a measure of health. A 



308 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

similar absence of baths is found in the houses of other 
foreign born and of the negroes in this section of the city, 
but it is regretable to have to institute the comparison be- 
cause along other lines the Jew's education and point of 
view are so far advanced over those of other nationalities/ 
Somewhat similar results to those above narrated were 
obtained with reference to a block further south. The 
study referred to was made by a resident of the College 
Settlement, Miss Edith Jones. The study embraced Car- 
penter, Christian, Fourth and Fifth Streets, and the north 
side of Christian Street between Fourth and Fifth. The 
investigator noted the following: " One observation as 
regards nationality needs to be recorded. An Irish fam- 
ily, unless hopelessly untidy, is thoroughly clean, not only 
inside but outside the house and all its surroundings. . . 
On the other hand, the majority of the Jewish homes are 
clean inside, but stairways, closets, yards, etc., which must 
be used in common by several families, are scarcely cared 
for at all. . . . They seem unable to act together or 
to form any agreement for division of common duties. 

In an uptown district an investigation into housing con- 
ditions was made in 1904 by Miss Emily W. Dinwiddle for 
the Octavia Hill Association.^ I visited a number of the 
houses with her. The district contained 35 houses on North 
American Street, 30 on New Market Street, and 8 on 
Wood Street, making 73 in which the inhabitants were 
predominantly Jews out of a total of 179 houses investi- 
gated. The number of Jewish families in these 73 houses 
was 100, an average of 1.45 families to a house. The total 
number of Jewish persons was found to be 606, of which 
341 were over fourteen years of age and 265 under that 
age. The number of rooms occupied by the Jev/ish families 
was 3.72, making an average of 1.66 persons to a room. 
The number per house was 8.36. 

The number of water-closets was 32 and of privies 42, 
making a total of 74 toilets, an average of one to a house, 
or of one to 8.19 persons each. There were 122 faucets 
(usually the only one for a house being connected with a 
hydrant in the yard) an average of 1.67 per house, or 1.22 
per family. The number of baths (whose faucets were 
included in the total) was 5. That is, there was an average 
of 121 persons to a tub. 

1 See Tenement Conditions in Chicago, p. 108. 

2 Housing Conditions in Philadelphia. 



PHILADELPHIA 309 

The rentals of the Jcv/ish families may be judged by 
those for the district generally. Families occupying one 
house paid $8.78 monthly, or $2.32 per room. In houses 
for more than one family the average was $5.18 per apart- 
ment and $2.40 per room. 

The occupations of the heads of the 100 Jewish families 
were as follows: Baker 4, blacksmith and iron worker 3, 
button-maker 1, buttonhole-maker 1, carpenter and cabinet- 
maker 4, cigar-maker 4, cobbler and shoemaker 4, cooper 1, 
driver and expressman 4, fruit huckster and fruit-stand 
dealer 9, glazier 1, hatmaker 3, horse dealer 1, Jewish teach- 
er 2, junk dealer 1, laborer 1, laundryman 2, leather worker 
3, masseur 1, nurse 1, operator on clothing 5, optician 1, pic- 
ture framer 1, polisher 1, presser 3, safemaker 1, salesman 1, 
shirtmaker 4, shopkeeper 10, tailor 10, ticket collector 1, tin- 
smith 3, trunlonaker 1, unskilled employee in factory 7. 

In the houses referred to v/e have illustrations largely of 
poor conditions and ill-kept surroundings. It is doubtless 
true that in the matter of housing, so far as 'can be present- 
ed by average statistics, no highly flattering results are to 
be adduced with reference to a number of sections in the 
down-town portion of the city. The results, to be sure, 
show standards on the whole not deficient as compared 
with surrounding populations of foreign immigrants and 
would in many respects be on a par with American fam- 
ilies of the same economic status. 

If we now proceed more generally we shall find that 
among the immigrant Jewish population, with economic 
strides there have been made vast social strides. A num- 
ber have moved into what are regarded as more respectable 
streets, where the surrounding conditions are more attrac- 
tive, the houses better built and modernized, with advan- 
tages of good plumbing, ample water accommodation, well 
ventilated rooms and the like; and they have been fur- 
nished in a becoming manner. So that when one steps into 
one of these homes of the Russian, Eoumanian or Hun- 
garian Jew of better grade and should have any precon- 
ceived notions as to dirty, ill-smelling apartments in the 
*' slums," he will be quickly disillusioned, and will find a 
superior state of affairs. He will see in the family a social 
attractiveness, an intellectual interest, and an enthusiastic 
whole-souledness that may at times take him aback, and he 
may be compelled to admit that the family has even some 
points of superiority over many of his acquaintances who 



310 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

do not live in the '' slums " and who pretend to be in an 
^ ' advanced ' ' state of mind. And the description does not 
necessarily apply to families which have progressed to a fair 
state of comfort. It has equal application to large num- 
bers of persons of modest income who keep their homes 
tidily, who live in small streets in small houses, but who 
nevertheless maintain an appearance superior to that of 
their neighbors. I know a number of such, but cannot 
bring out their existence in a statistical statement covering 
any particular block, for they are in scattered groups. 

When, therefore, we cast up the account of the im- 
migrant Jew on the score of cleanliness we must take into 
consideration these families, for they give tone, dignity 
and worth to the population, and nowhere can be found 
an immigrant class which shows the advanced state which 
these show. 

In all my wanderings in the southern section of the city 
I have rarely seen a drunken Jewish man. My experiences 
with reference to other nationalities of all sorts, including 
native Americans, would place the immigrant Jewish pop- 
ulation at the head of the list of the non-drunken portion 
of the community. The temperateness of the Jewish pop- 
ulation and of the Russian Jewish population in particular 
is so patent a fact, even to the ordinary observer, that there 
is hardly any necessity for dwelling on the subject. But 
it must be taken into consideration to the credit of this 
element whenever detractors may bring charges against it, 
for a people that will preserve itself against the evils of 
drink is entitled to be regarded as in a most progressive 
state of civilization and to be counted as in so far a de- 
sirable factor in the community. Those who see the evil 
moral and economic consequences of drunkenness among 
other portions of the community cannot gainsay this. 

Russian tea may be said to be a national beverage. It is 
quite common to observe this drunk in the homes, the 
societies, and the cafes of the Russian Jewish popula- 
tion. 

There is a very prevalent habit of cigarette smoking. 
With the college young man the cigarette habit sometimes 
gives way to that of the pipe. With the prosperous busi- 
ness man the cigarette is likewise replaced by the cigar. 
But, as a rule, the cigarette may be said to be the prevail- 
ing means of inhaling tobacco among the Russian Jewish 
population. In his hours of relaxation, therefore, we may 



PHILADELPHIA 311 

think of the Russian Jew with his Russian tea and his 
cigarette. 

Let us now take up the subject of health and disease 
among this population. 

*' Slums Free of Disease " was the heading of an ac- 
count in one of the Philadelphia newspapers in the sum- 
mer of 1903. The article stated: '' The fact that not a 
single case of smallpox has existed in that section of the 
city known as the ' slums ' during the present spread of 
the disease and the consequent absence of the vaccinating 
corps in that locality was thus explained by an official of 
the Bureau of Plealth to-day: ' In every foreign country, 
with the exception of England, compulsory vaccination is 
in force,' he said. ' Those who might have escaped the 
vigilance of the physicians or who hail from England are 
inspected before they are permitted to land in this country, 
and if they have not been successfully vaccinated they 
must submit to the operation, or go back. 

** * Then, again, their children are not allowed to enter 
the public schools until they have been vaccinated, so you 
can readily see that the people in the slum district are the 
best vaccinated in this city. ' ' ' 

Whether this is the whole explanation or not, I do not 
know, so far as concerns the various elements of the popu- 
lation, but it will be noted further on that in regard to the 
Jewish element, there is a special reason in the wide-spread 
belief in, and practice of, vaccination. 

Not only was there comparatively less spread of small- 
pox in the lower wards of the city, but also diphtheria, 
scarlet fever and typhoid, of which diseases epidemics 
raged in portions of the other parts of the city. No deduc- 
tion can be made in regard to this in behalf of the Jews in 
the down-town wards of the city, except that they shared 
with their neighbors the absence of epidemic in these 
diseases. 

I have availed myself of some observations in regard to 
phases of the subject under discussion, which have been 
made by two Philadelphia physicians. 

The following in regard to diseases among the im- 
migrant Jewish population, with special reference to con- 
ditions in Philadelphia, is by Dr. David Riesman, and was 
presented as a discussion on a paper on " Health Prob- 
lems of the Jewish Poor," read by Dr. Maurice Fishberg, 



312 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

of New* York, at tlie Jewish Chautauqua Summer As- 
sembly in Atlantic City, N. J., July, 1903 : 

The problems that present themselves to those engaged 
in an effort to ameliorate the condition of the Jewish poor 
may, from the medical standpoint, be stated as follows: 
(1) What diseases afflict the Jewish poor? (2) Why do 
those diseases afflict them? (3) How can these diseases be 
prevented ? 

The Jewish poor are, of course, subject to the same 
maladies as is the general community in which they live. 
Scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, influenza, whooping 
cough, pneumonia and typhoid fever prevail among them, 
according to season and epidemic influences. With regard 
to the first two, scarlet fever and diphtheria, the records 
of the LIunicipal Hospital of Philadelphia, as my friend. 
Dr. Jay F. Schamberg, informs me, show the admission of 
a far larger number of JcAvish children than is warranted 
by the ratio of these to the general population. I was in- 
deed startled to learn that not less than 25 per cent, of the 
cases of scarlet fever had occurred in children of Russo- 
Jewish parentage. In the case of diphtheria the figures 
are lower, but none the less striking. It is highly improb- 
able, however, that the terrible frequency of these two af- 
fections in the children of the Jewish poor indicates any 
racial tendency ; it is much more likely to be due to living 
in crowded quarters, several families usually being hud- 
dled together in one house. 

Smallpox, it seems, does not so often attack the Jews as 
it does their Gentile neighbors. Among 2,700 cases of that 
disease received into the Municipal Hospital within the 
last two years, there was only one Jewish patient. This 
remarkable immunity is unquestionably due to the fact 
that the Jews have an abiding and most laudable faith in 
the efficacy of vaccination as a preventive of smallpox. 
An unvaccinated Jev/ish adult is a great rarity. 

The multitude of diseases due to alcoholic excess, also, 
are rarely met with among the Jewish poor; for intemper- 
ance in drink is not common with them. If, however, I 
might judge from my own limited experience, I should say 
that there is a growing fondness for alcohol in the Jewish 
population; and that this may in time need to be com- 
batted. 

In addition to scarlet fever and diphtheria, there are yet 
other diseases to which the Jewish poQr seein more prone 



PHILADELPHIA 313 

than their fellow races. With regard to some of these it is 
not possible to give figures; and the belief in a racial pre- 
disposition rests upon impressions rather than upon sta- 
tistics. Thus, disorders of the blood — anaemia and pur- 
puric (hemorrhagic) conditions appear to be more 

prevalent among the Jews. The reason for this is, pri- 
marily, the deleterious effects of poverty and over- 
crowding; and also the insufficient use of green vegetables 
and wholesome food in general, and probably the early 
maturing of the sexes. 

Diseases of the stomach are extremely common among 
the Jews, particularly among the Jewish poor — more com- 
mon than they are in other races of this dyspeptic country. 
The cause of this is not intemperance in eating, which 
plays such an important part in producing stomach trouble 
among the general American population; for the Russian 
Jews are quantitatively frugal. Hasty eating, however, 
poor food — or, rather food unsuited to this climate, tea 
drinking, and perhaps undue indulgence in soda water and 
kindred beverages, — all these serve to produce gastic dis^ 
orders. The confinement occasioned by the chief occupa- 
tions of the Jewish poor is also a factor, as it is a factor 
in the majority of diseases afflicting them. 

Morbid conditions of the blood vessels are likewise more 
common among them than they should be and than they 
need be. Arterial diseases, such as hardening of the ar- 
teries, occur especially in the men, and are in large meas- 
ure due to the abuse of tobacco begun early in life. This 
and other excesses that I need not specify are also respon- 
sible for the frequency of palpitation of the heart. 

Erysipelas is, I believe, a trifle more common among the 
Jewish poor than among the Gentiles (though I have no 
extensive data with which to substantiate the correctness 
of this view). At the Philadelphia Hospital, among sixty 
Russian Jews admitted during the two years from July, 
1901, to July, 1903, there were six cases of erysipelas, or 10 
per cent., a percentage far larger than that in non-Jews, 
which was only 4.2. (There were, for instance, twice as 
many cases of erysipelas as of rheumatism among the Jews 
admitted. ) 

Dr. Fishberg has most admirably discussed the prev- 
alence of tuberculosis among the Jewish poor; and my 
friend, Dr. S. Solis-Cohen, did much on a former occasion 
to bring this important matter before the public. They 



314 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

have covered the subject so fully that I can add nothing to 
what they said. 

Of the frequency of diabetes, to which the poor Jews are 
probably not quite so prone as their wealthy co-religionists, 
I need not speak. We know, at present, too little about the 
causes of the disease to make preventive measures possible. 

The exceeding prevalence of nervous affection among the 
Jews is recognized as an axiom in medicine. Nearly all 
writers upon nervous diseases, including insanity and 
idiocy, refer to the fact and try to find reasons for it. The 
chief cause, it seems to me, is heredity in the larger sense 
— a racial predisposition transmitted through generations. 
For this hereditary taint, the grinding intensity of the 
struggle for existence to which the Jews of Central and 
Eastern Europe have for ages been subjected is responsible. 
I need not describe the deplorable and pitiable conditions 
in Russia, whence the majority of our poor Jews come. 
** In all Europe," says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, " there is 
no people poorer, none that is compelled to earn its bread 
under greater difficulties than are nine-tenths of the Rus- 
sian Jews;" and the noted Zionist, Dr. Mandelstamm, 
says, with grim humor, that there is no people on which 
experiments in starvation and in the results of insufficient 
light and air may be made with more ease than on the 
Ghetto Jews. 

These down-trodden Jews come, therefore, to this coun- 
try with a high-strung, unstable, nervous system, which the 
conditions of American life are not likely to improve in 
the first, or even in the second, generation. Our mode of 
living is in itself productive of various nervous disorders. 
Nervous prostration (or, as it is called, neurasthenia) had 
been discovered in this country by the famous New York 
physician. Beard, and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell had devised 
his renowned rest-cure treatment for nervous disease, long 
before the Russian hegira had begun. 

Some authorities, such as Professors Erb and Kraepelin, 
of Heidelberg, and the late Krafft-Ebing, have maintained 
that in-breeding is, among the Jews, a factor in producing 
hereditary weakness of the nervous system; but Dr. Mar- 
tin Englander, of Vienna, denies this, holding that from 
eight to ten millions of people are sufficient to preserve a 
healthy race. He points to the Americans — a race pro- 
duced by the very opposite of in-breeding, and yet one 
among which neurasthenia is widely prevalent. Among the 



PHILADELPHIA 315 

older stocks of Jews in this country, the Portuguese and 
the Germans, there has necessarily been some in-breeding, 
but apparently without harmful effect. The contrary, 
rather, is the case; the race has been improved physically. 
This improvement is noticeable in greater stature and in 
the development of a generally finer type of men and 
women. 

Neurasthenia is most common among the Jews, but hys- 
teria and insanity and idiocy are likewise frequent. The 
neurasthenic Russian Hebrew is an interesting tj^pe, and 
was aptly compared by Charcot to the Wandering Jew. In 
an entertaining monograph, Henry Meige, one of Charcot's 
pupils, traces the legend of the Juif-Errant, and compares 
it with the actual conditions seen in the migratory, rest- 
less Jews of Eastern origin. From the farthest corners of 
Europe, undismayed by the bitterest hardships imposed by 
poverty, they find their begging way to La Salpetriere at 
Paris. After a few visits to the famous clinic, they vanish 
as noiselessly as they come, wander back to their far-off 
home and by singing the praises of the great French 
specialists, induce others to undertake the wearisome 
journey. 

How can w^e prevent the spread of nervous affections 
among the Jews ? How can we eradicate the sinister taint ? 
Dr. Fishberg has indicated the direction in which the an- 
swer lies. We must improve economic conditions. 

There must be less over-crowding, shorter hours of work, 
and rational recreation. If we cannot keep the Jewish im- 
migrants from settling in the large cities, we must dis- 
perse them there. There is a tendency to spontaneous dis- 
persion in Philadelphia. Gradually the Russian Jews are 
migrating northv/ard and southward from the central 
Ghetto, but it will take decades before they are sui^ciently 
scattered to make the hygienic and moral surroundings 
w^hat they should be. 

The Jewish poor must be taught that the new climatic 
conditions require the adopting of another sort of food. 
They must be instructed in the harmfulness of the abuse 
of tobacco. 

I should also like to see them cultivate the manly sports 
— baseball, football, rowing, swimming — which do much 
to develop the body and to imbue the mind with a spirit of 
self-respecting, fearless manhood. 

Tuberculosis, that other great scourge, can best be com- 



316 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

batted by 'education, under the segis, as Dr. Fishberg lias 
properly said, of charitable organizations assisted by medi- 
cal advisers. Out-door life and participation in the na- 
tional sports will help to develop the chest, which is decid- 
edly smaller in proportion to height than that of non-Jews. 
The dissemination of knowledge regarding the communica- 
bility and the prevention of tuberculosis that has been un- 
dertaken vv^th such good results, first by Dr. Biggs, of the 
New York Board of Health, and now by the authorities in 
Philadelphia, Cleveland, and other cities, will do much to 
lessen the frequency of the dreaded disease. Establishing 
sanatoria near large cities will also prove of great benefit, 
as it will render possible an earlier treatment of the dis- 
ease ; and this is essential if a cure is to be effected. 

With all his proverbial tenacity of character, the Jew, 
especially the Eastern Jew, is physically and psychically 
extremely plastic, and only needs a reasonably favorable en- 
vironment to develop into a noble specimen of man. His 
energy, intelligence and integrity will solve many of the 
perplexing economic problems, and in that way the sani- 
tary and hygienic questions will in part, at least, be 
ansvv^ered. 

On the subject of consumption, the following is taken 
from the discussion of Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen on Dr. 
Fishberg's paper upon the same occasion as Dr. Riesman's 
discussion : 

The knowledge of how to prevent consumption is neither 
absent nor new. It is old and thoroughly recognized, but 
it is not acted upon. Liability to the infection of con- 
sumption comes from lack of food, from overwork, from 
over-anxiety, from lack of fresh air, from lack of sunshine, 
from lack of cleanliness. The infective agent thrives in 
dampness, darkness and filth — dies in cleanliness, sun- 
shine and fresh air. You cannot shut people up, six or 
nine in a room hardly big enough for one, and too damp, 
dark and dirty for any, — you cannot have them work in- 
doors under factory, tenement and sweatshop conditions, 
sixteen hours a day for starvation wages, and expect racial 
resistance to tuberculosis or religious dietary laws to save 
them. It is an utter impossibility. Some years ago Dr. 
Riesman and I went over the records of our dispensary 
service at the Philadelphia Polyclinic to see approximately 
how large a proportion the number of consumptive Jews 
bore to the number of consumptives of other social groups 



PHILADELPHIA 317 

who came to the same clinic. We found that a very large 
proportion — I think something like 12 per cent, of the 
poor Russian Jews of Philadelphia who applied to that dis- 
pensary, were consumptive; but we also found that the 
proportion of the consumptives among these poor Jews 
was less by one-third or more than that among the poor 
people of other races who came to the same dispensary. In 
other words, the racial immunity apparently saved some 
poor Jews, but evidently did not save all. Sweeping con- 
clusions cannot be drawn from the experience of one physi- 
cian, no matter how great that experience may be; for 
after all, any one person has but a very limited experience 
compared with that of the profession at large. Yet in so 
far as I may draw guarded conclusions from my own ex- 
perience, it would appear that consumption is largely on 
the increase among the poor Eussian Jews of Philadelphia ; 
that the relative immunity to-day is less than it was at the 
time Dr. Riesman and I made the investigations referred 
to, for my Gratz College lecture. I see proportionally more 
Jewish consumptives than I used to see, and after making 
all necessary corrections for personal factors, that means 
that the stress and storm of the struggle for existence are 
bearing more hardly upon them, that they are more nar- 
rowly crowded, more poorly fed, more excessively over- 
worked, in a more deplorable economic condition. This is 
so, notwithstanding the obvious fact that many among 
those who have come to Philadelphia from Russia, during 
the past twenty j^ears, have left the ranks of the poor and 
comparatively poor, and entered into those of the well-to- 
do and the comparatively wealthy. The large increase in 
immigration and the natural increase among those who re- 
main very poor, continue to keep up this disproportion. 



(C) CHICAGO 

Among the many injustices of Russian despotism is her 
cruel discrimination against Karaites, Stimdists, Finland- 
ers, and Jews. Crowded as millions of the latter are into 
the comparatively small southwestern portion of Russia 
they cannot live under conditions as favorable as they 
might were they permitted to settle in the interior where 
space is less valuable than it is on the frontiers. 

It is very difficult for one who has not visited the coun- 
try to get a true conception of the surroundings of the 
Jew in ' ' White Russia " or " The Pale. ' ' Writers like Leo 
Errera and Harold Frederic have given us interesting liter- 
ature on this subject, but they have been so touched by the 
intolerance of Russian Christianity ( ? ) that through their 
sympathetic minds we can see only the picture of a great 
Inferno. 

The Russian immigrant in America tells a somewhat dif- 
ferent tale from theirs. We must, however, remember that 
his native love of home and the fatherland lends a rosy 
coloring to all his memories of far-away Russland. He 
really loves his country and hates only the government re- 
strictions against him. He will tell you that the microbe- 
holding, smell-emitting air-shaft of our modern tenement 
is unknown in Russia. The tenements are rarely over 
three stories high, and each is provided with a court-yard 
where the children may play free from the dangers and 
temptations of the streets. 

American sanitary plumbing is the finest in the world. 
But about three-quarters of our population are permitted 
to live in homes unprovided with this new preventive of 
disease ; so we are really in this matter not very far ahead 
of Russia. Laws for the prevention of contagious diseases 
in America are more rigid and more carefully enforced 
than are those of Russia, which may partly account for our 
smaller child mortality. 

The death rate among non-Jews in Russia is larger than 
that of the Jewish population. This is due, above all, to 

318 



CHICAGO 319 

the temperance of the Jew, who rarely drinks the intoxi- 
cating vodka, and lives according to the Mosaic law. Al- 
though orthodox Judaism is not so strong as it was a gen- 
eration ago, yet as habit is powerful there still exists a 
strict adherence to the customs of the Mosaic code. Early 
marriages are still the rule and home life throws its safe- 
guards about the health and life of the individual. 

In Chicago there are Russian Jews of every class, from 
the semi-millionaire to the day laborer, from the oriental- 
looking Jew whose education is purely Talmudical to the 
professional man who occupies a prominent position in 
modern literature or science. 

Among the wealthier and the indifferent who do not care 
to live near the orthodox shops and synagogues we find, of 
course, all modern appliances for sanitation and health. 
These now live on the avenues and boulevards where money 
is the open sesame to comfort and convenience. One would 
hardly recognize in these people the same human beings 
who ten or fifteen years before had lived on the West Side 
in uncomfortable surroundings. No people rise more rap- 
idly than these so soon as they find opportunity. 

This paper will deal mainly with the poorer classes, — 
mechanics, factory '' hands," small manufacturers, shop- 
keepers, clerks, day laborers, and the like. These are set- 
tled in four main districts, viz. : Englewood, Brighton 
Park, the Northwest Side, and the West Side, in the Ninth 
Ward and its vicinity. Many have also migrated to subur- 
ban towns, — Pullman, Evanston, Kensington, East Chi- 
cago, South Chicago and Hegewisch. In Englewood rents 
are low and housing conditions excellent. Yards, bath- 
rooms, and modern laundries are plentiful. Here we have 
an example of how the Russian Jewish workingman and 
his family will live if given the chance. While the moral, 
financial, and educational status of the people there is 
about the same as that of the Jews in the Ninth Ward, no 
one has yet called the Englewood district a Ghetto, nor 
has anyone so designated the wards where wealthy Jews 
have chosen to live near their temples, relatives, friends 
and social or business interests. 

The Northwest Side is the home of many of Chicago's 
most intellectual Russian Jews. There are many artistic 
homes here even where there is little money, the educated 
mother and housewife making this possible. 



320 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

Brighton Park bids fair to become another Englewood 
for the Jewish artisan and small trader. 

The West Side district contains about 30,000 Russian 
Jews, who pay high rents for the privilege of living in in- 
sanitary houses. Fortunately conditions are not so bad 
there as they seem on first sight. Walking through the 
streets of the neighborhood one is shocked by the dirt and 
disorder. But it is the aesthetic and not the moral sense 
which is outraged. The district is not really a slum. Evi- 
dences of education, morality, and intelligence are found 
in abundance. With the exception of incorrigible boys and 
petty gamblers, there is no vicious element. Temperance 
rules supreme. Soda water is sold at the grocery stores at 
two cents a bottle and at the stands for one cent a glass. 
This in summer and weak tea in winter are the national 
drinks of the Russian Jewish populace. No neighborhood 
in our city, with the exception of Prohibition districts, 
shows so few saloons to the number of population. 

A growing demand for accommodations is causing land- 
lords to build on yard space. Accordingly, little children 
are compelled to use the streets for play grounds, and there 
are little children galore. Passing wagons and trolley cars, 
defective plank pavements, disease breeding garbage boxes, 
and falling missiles play sad havoc with these innocents 
who furnish ample material for the nearby clinics and dis- 
pensaries. 

Boys and girls with faces and frocks besmirched, care- 
worn men and women, disorderly shops, rickety shanties, 
which bring on pneumonia and rheumatism, all on streets 
shamefully neglected by the city authorities, miake up a 
scene which must cause us to blush for our much vaunted 
civilization. 

There is the aloofness and indifference of those who could 
be a powerful help in changing the state of affairs. They 
should use their influence for the enactment and enforce- 
ment of a law prohibiting the renting of apartments 
which are not provided with proper sanitary appliances. 

Our West Side settlement of Russian Jews is essentially 
a community of homes. The " bunk " system, cheap 
lodging houses, trashy restaurants, and men's boarding 
houses are conspicuous by their absence. The free lunch 
saloon is rare. Single men and women without homes 
either rent furnished rooms or board with families. Sel- 
dom v/ill a family take more than one or two '' roomers " 



CHICAGO 



321 



or boarders. The restaurants are high-priced and whole- 
some. There is no hotel in the whole district. The poor- 
est individual pays a family one dollar a week for lodg- 
ing and coffee or tea in the morning. A penny roll for 
breakfast and another for supper make up the morning 
and evening fare of some of these lodgers. For dinner 
the kind housewife adds five cents' worth of meat to her 
pot for the lodger and furnishes the cooking free. Thus 
much against his habit and personal inclination many a 
poor student or peddler lives temporarily on one dollar 
and fifty cents a week. However, the large majority of 
the inhabitants of the district average about $3 per person 
for board alone. 

In some few isolated cases a family occupies one room, 
l)ut usually the poorest have two rooms or more. The ma- 
jority have three or four. 

At the Foster Public School 1,730 children were ques- 
tioned as to the number of rooms occupied by their par- 
ents. The information obtained was as follows: 



CHILDREN CLASSED ACCORDING TO NUMBER OF ROOMS OCCUPIED BY THEIR 
FAMICIES 



Havinj 



1 room 


for each fami 


2 rooms 




3 


' 


" " " 


4 


' 


" " " 


5 


' 


" " " 


6 


' 


" " " 


7 


' 


" " " 


8 


' 


" " " 


9 


' 


" " " 


10 


' 


" " •' 


14 


' 


" " " 



195 

778 

305 

215 

70 

79 

1 

2 

1 

Total 1730 



The majority of the children in this school are of Rus- 
sian Jewish parentage. 

At the Washburne School 798 were questioned. The 
result was as follows : 



Having 1 room for each family 
" 2 rooms 

3 
" 4 

5 

6 



3 

31 
102 
289 
159 
122 

47 



Total 798 



322 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

The Wasliburne is attended almost entirely by children 
of Russian Jews.^ 

In the majority of West Side homes among these peo- 
ple the kitchen is the only room that is suitably heated 
for bathing purposes. It is also used for the family sitting 
and dining room. The statement has often been made 
that soap and water are cheap, but what of the warm pri- 
vate bath-room? Here there are thousands of people com- 
pelled to live under conditions, that, to say the least, make 
the bath at home exceedingly difficult. Often the tired 
workingman or workingwoman and the growing boy or 
girl must wait until after midnight before the only com- 
fortable room in the flat is vacated. A r^al estate agent, 
who has been fifteen years in the Ninth AVard, says that 
in the district east of Halsted Street there is not one apart- 
ment in four hundred furnished with a bathroom or hot 
water connections. In the district bounded by Halsted, 
Canal, West Twelfth, and West Fourteenth Streets, the 
distinctively Jewish section, but 373 out of a population of 
10,452, or 2.56 per cent., have bath tubs.^ Many families 
are moving west of Halsted Street in the search for apart- 
ments with bath rooms. 

There are some wealthy residents who occupy the few 
modern steam-heated flats which are in great demand. 
There is one model apartment house at the corner of 
Bunker and Desplaines Streets, but of its twenty-four 
families only four are Jewish. These flats are heated by 
steam and have sanitary plumbing and bath rooms. All 
the rooms are light and well ventilated. There are 
porches, flower boxes, paved court-yards, and fire escapes. 
The rents are from thirteen to sixteen dollars a month for 
a flat of four or five rooms. The building is under the 
management of an able social settlement worker, who her- 
self lives in one of the flats. She says that after deducting 
from the profits a sufficient amount to pay for the natural 
depreciation in its value the house pays five per cent, on 
the investment. 

Such buildings, with good sanitary arrangements, and 
with humane and intelligent agents on the premises, would 
mean the saving of life and health to hundreds of men and 

^ These statistics were gathered through the courtesy of Miss Flowers of the 
Washburne School and the Misses Schgoldager and Bernstein of the Foster 
School. 

- Tenement Conditions in Chicago, p_. 108. 



CHICAGO 323 

women in our crowded city districts. In our West Side 
community of Jews such tenements would help to lift the 
lives of the young from discomfort and despair to hap- 
piness and hope. It must be admitted, however, that 
agents would sometimes be necessary to combat the slovenly 
housewife; not all the defects are due to the landlord. 

At present the Ninth "Ward is covered with small frame 
and brick buildings originally intended for one or two 
families, but now subdivided into four or five apartments 
which rent for from $2 to $3 a month per room. 

A few enterprising landlords have already put up in- 
sanitary tenements with dark, disease-breeding bed-rooms. 
The time seems very near at hand when Chicago is to de- 
velop the tenement-house horror as it exists in New York 
City. Shall we not take warning now and prevent it? 
Mere laws on the statute books, we have found by experi- 
ence, do not wholly protect the poor from municipal evils. 
The workingman is often too busy earning a living to be 
able to protect his interests. The leisure class should ex- 
ercise eternal vigilance for the proper housing of the poor. 
Behind the laws are needed interested individuals con- 
stantly watching in reference to their enforcement. 

Ninth Ward plumbing and closets are unhygienic. 
Rarely is there a house fitted with screens. Thus, flies 
carry disease germs from house to house. There are no 
laundry rooms. Chimneys are defective. The rooms are 
cold and smoky during our long winters and close in sum- 
mer. Frequently dead rats lie rotting beneath the flooring 
in these old shanties. Pavements are broken and steps are 
rickety. Ventilation without the admission of draughts is 
almost impossible. Yet who cares? The poor tenant can- 
not be forever quarreling with his landlord, who will tell 
him to move on if he does not like conditions. There are 
people who could alter these things if they would. Some 
have suggested moving the Jewish people from the Ninth 
Ward to other places. This would still leave the same vile 
buildings to be inhabited by other human beings. The 
erection of model dwellings and shops, with the abolition 
of the street stand, would remedy many of the evils. 

That the Russian Jew does not belong to the life he is 
compelled to live in the Ninth Ward is proven by the gen- 
eral discontent among the residents, who live there only 
because of strong business or social ties which make it 
seem to them necessary. Many regret this necessity, but 



324 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

like the' majority of humanity are ruled by circumstance. 

This neighborhood supports six or more large private 
bathing establishments, which charge from fifteen cents to 
twenty-five cents each for baths. Besides, the barber shops 
do a thriving business by furnishing baths for the younger 
men and boys. The women and older men patronize the 
Eussian bathing establishments. They are too expensive 
for the children and are rarely used by the younger un- 
married women whose income is frequently not more than 
$4 per week. There are many classes of poor in a great 
city. Each has its virtue. One virtue of the poorest Rus- 
sian Jewish family is that the bath house is patronized 
by them. Another is that their standards of living are not 
low, as is amply proven so far as house rents go, by the 
statistics in the report of the City Homes Association, 
** Tenement Conditions in Chicago." 

If they are not better cared for, others as well as they 
are responsible. It is criminal to permit the renting to 
human beings of apartments which are not better fitted for 
that purpose than are dog kennels. The health of a whole 
city is endangered by insanitary conditions in any of its 
parts. For our own protection we should insist on good 
housing throughout the city. 

You ask if the Russian Jew is discontented with his sur- 
roundings in the Ninth Ward why does he not move to 
where rents are lower and houses better? It is because 
of his peculiar observances. He does not ride on the Sab- 
bath day. Consequently he wants to live within walking 
distance of his orthodox synagogue. He desires to eat 
food which can be obtained only at the kosher (ceremonial- 
ly clean) shops. Consequently he wishes to live near these 
shops. Often he can speak only the Yiddish language. 
Then, too, in many cases he can best earn his living among 
his own people. Sometimes his work or business is within 
walking distance and he wants to save care fares. He has, 
too, family ties and social interests. Even if streets are 
neglected and houses are vile, he endeavors to adapt him- 
self to his environment. Who is to blame? He is, in so 
far as he does not take action to compel landlords and 
city authorities to furnish sanitary necessities and clean 
streets. We all are, in so far as we heap cold *' charity " 
on the community and do not co-operate with its members 
to secure justice. These people give us untainted, splen- 
did m?)terial for the future American citizen. They toil 



CHICAGO 325 

in factory and store to supply onr needs, to give onr 
children wealth and comfort. We owe them, at least, 
health-preserving habitations; else our civilization is no 
civilization and our social ethics are worthless. 

A syndicate of the philanthropic could build model 
dwellings, shops and market houses. These could be 
rented at reasonable rates to bring a small profit. The 
sharp landlord would be driven out of business by such an 
organization. He could no longer thrive at the expense 
of human life and health. Such a philanthropic corpora- 
tion would have large profits in the joy of having saved 
families from disease and disgrace. The aesthetic sense of 
the tenant would be stimulated by making order and 
cleanliness possible and easy. Prizes offered in the schools, 
synagogues, and chedarim (Hebrew schools) for well kept 
homes and shops might wholly change the character of the 
ward. Much municipal carelessness would be checked by 
a powerful association working in co-operation with the 
tenants of insanitary neighborhoods. At present greedy 
landlords club together to pay lawyers to prevent even 
much needed street paving, thus leaving catch holes and 
culture beds for all sorts of disease germs on our wooden 
pavements. 

Those who think they will scatter the Russian Jewish 
people over other parts of the city, when every law of 
nature, circumstance and religion causes them to segregate 
as they do on the West Side, are much mistaken. What they 
may hope to do is to change the character of the so-called 
Ghetto. For the last thirty years thinkers and philan- 
thropists here in Chicago have tried to help the Jewish 
poor. They are learning that to know and truly help a 
people one must live with them, love them, and extend to 
them not only charity but friendship, sincere, earnest, 
and on a plane of equality. Men here have talked and 
talked of the " poor Russian.'^ The '' poor Russian " 
who knows that he is a strong, great-hearted Russian in 
all but money has both laughed and wept as he has lis- 
tened to these discussions. You have not heard his answer 
because he has not always had the command of your lan- 
guage. Read his Yiddish newspapers. You will find his 
answer in them. He has for generations been a student 
and thinker. He is rapidly learning our language. He 
will work out his own salvation in time, even though left 
severely alone. The philanthropist may hasten that time 



326 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

])y judiGioiis assistance, or defer it lay '' charity " which 
weakens and pauperizes. Those who are ashamed of an 
American Ghetto — and well they may be — have now 
the opportunity of working for better conditions in the 
homes of their less fortunate co-religionists and of show- 
ing the world by example that ^' the fittest place for man 
to live is where he lives for man." There are wise, power- 
ful, and cultured Jews in Chicago. They belong to the 
Ninth Ward as much as to any other and should go there 
frequently for its improvement. 

Yflien we consider the individual habits of these people 
we must admit that all is not as we would wish. The 
Russian Jewish housewife, although a good cook, is a poor 
laundress. She is often not methodical or neat. She is 
intensely sociable and will frequently be found visiting 
her neighbors when she should be cleaning her sinks or 
arranging her closets. She will wear soiled aprons, and 
have many useless dust-holding gewgaws in her home and 
is careless of her personal appearance. Her husband 
often, in the words of George Eliot, '' matches her." 
They are both greatly overburdened by work and care. 
They will sit down to brood over their troubles in the 
new country and thus sap the energy and ambition which 
should be used for the betterment of their home surround- 
ings. 

Fortunately, they have many religious holidays. The 
advent of these and of the Sabbath rouses them from their 
lethargy. There is a general cleaning of the houses. 
Children are bathed in preparation for the holidays and 
the Sabbath. Men and women flock to the bath-houses. 
Special meals are prepared. Tired brains and bodies are 
given a much needed rest. The Passover in the spring is 
the occasion for a complete housecleaning and for remov- 
ing every crumb of leavened bread. With the bread 
crumbs many a heap of dust and microbes is also re- 
moved. 

A large number of the younger generation have de- 
parted from the ways of their ancestors in the matter of 
religion. So long as they are single, and when away from 
home, they eat without scruple foods prepared in other 
than Orthodox Jewish ways. When, however, they marry 
and have homes of their own, the wishes of parents, other 
relatives, or friends are respected and a new orthodox 



CHICAGO 327 

home is established. Besides, their tastes are for custo- 
mary Jewish foods. 

The minimum for which a family of six can ordinarily 
have its table supplied is about a dollar a day. Half the 
food is bought at the Jewish shops. The women are ex- 
pert fish buyers. They will accept none but the freshest. 
Orthodox Jews will buy only live fowl or those newly 
killed by their own experts, who sever the blood vessels 
of the throat and drain the animal of its blood. The blood 
is still further removed from all meat by soaking and 
salting. After killing the animal the schochet (slaughter- 
er) looks over it for any diseased or abnormal condition, 
which if found makes it immediately unfit for food and 
causes its rejection. No Jewish butcher of repute among 
the people will sell meat which is over six days old. 

As their religion enjoins waiting six hours between the 
meat and the milk meal, and as the Jewish housewife has 
an entirely separate set of dishes for the meat meal — 
which is prepared with much care — she becomes a splen- 
did ally of the physician in the treatment of rheumatism 
and similar diseases. Few of the orthodox families have 
more than one meal a day at which meat is served. 

The Jew is supposed to search the carcass of any animal 
used as food, to ascertain whether it is diseased. This, 
unfortunately, is not done according to our modern knowl- 
edge of infectious diseases, so that the ritual search of the 
schochetim (slaughterers) v.^ho are employed by the great 
stockyard packers here amoimts to almost nothing as a 
preventive of any disease other than tuberculosis. The 
very careful examination of the lungs results in discarding 
the tubercular animals. 

The orthodox housewife is compelled to be minutely 
careful in the selection of food. As the maggot is forbid- 
den food, she will not buy factory cheese. She carefully 
picks cherries, prunes and other fruits. Cereals are tested 
on a warm tin plate in the search for maggots. Cabbage 
is carefully picked for insects. Foul vegetables cannot be 
used. 

The wine cup is in imiversal use for ceremonial purposes 
on all holidays and on each Sabbath. The wine and 
brandy bottle have their place in every home. There is 
no Jewish temperance organization, yet where can one find 
less drunkenness and fewer saloons than in the West Side 
settlement of Russian Jews? 



328 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

Tobacco- is everywhere in evidence. So are the tobacco 
throat and nervousness. The cigarette and pipe are the 
boon companions of young men and old. But the 
woman cigarette smoker finds no place among the Russian 
Jews, The orthodox never smoke on the Sabbath ; at every 
step their religion fosters self-control. 

To the credit of those great educational factors among 
Russian Jewish Americans, the penny Yiddish and Eng- 
lish newspapers, it must be said that modern ideas of 
sanitation and health are being widely disseminated. It 
is, however, doubtful whether the newer laws will be so 
strictly adhered to as those that have the adamantine 
binding of religion. 

It is worthy of passing notice that the Russian Jew 
seldom has the Roman nose. There seems to be a de- 
cided difference, too, in the features of the younger 
immigrants as compared with the older. 

Placing side by side the statistics of two of our Chicago 
hospitals, one markedly non-Jewish in the nationality of 
its patients, the other in which no less than 75 per cent, 
of the patients are Russian Jews, we find in about 1,000 
cases in each the following ratios : 



JEWISH HOSPITAL 


NON-JEWISH HOSPITAI. 


Pneumonia 


41 


24 


Rheumatism 


47 


20 


Hernias 


56 


29 


Neurasthenia 


39 


17 


Diabetes 


5 


3 


Delirium tremens 


1 


36 


Morphinism 


1 


5 


Syphilis 


4 


18 



These statistics are meagre, roughly compiled, and 
somewhat inaccurate, but they will illustrate what physi- 
cians coming much in contact with Russian Jews con- 
stantly notice, namely, that they are especially prone to 
rheumatism, neurasthenia, hernias, and pneumonia. 

Dr. A. W. Schram, of Chicago, during his residence as 
interne at the Michael Reese Hospital, told the writer that 
in his opinion the many hernias were due to a weak mus- 
cularity. 

Rheumatism and pneumonia are undoubtedly brought 
on by a lowered resistance due to exposure in our severe 
climate. 

The neurasthenia and hernias may be attributed to the 



CHICAGO 329 

fact that the people are descendants of students and them- 
selves frequently follow sedentary occupations. 

As the two hospitals above referred to do not admit 
patients suffering from tuberculosis, no statistics relative 
to this disease could be obtained from those sources. Dr. 
Maurice Fishberg^ places the death rate from tuberculosis 
among Jews at only 110.56 to 100,000 of population as 
against 565.06 per 100,000 of other residents of New York 
City. _ 

Statistics of tuberculosis among the living are unreliable- 
because frequently patients that are declared tubercular 
show in course of time no development of the disease. 
Though many leave their homes in search of health, the 
majority of the really consumptive go home to die, so that 
the death rate may be considered a fair basis. 

Tuberculosis is much too prevalent among Jews in Chi- 
cago but not more than among other people; probably 
less. Unquestionably there is less consumption in the 
Ninth Ward than in other wards where equally criminal 
housing conditions prevail. 

Carcinoma is comparatively frequent. Syphilis is 
rarely seen in its worst forms, and the ulcerated sore 
throat almost never. General paresis and locomotor 
ataxia are also very rare among orthodox Jews. That 
circumcision is not a preventive of specific disease is 
proven by Chicago clinics and dispensaries. 

Osler^ states that the Jew is especially prone to diabetes. 
English physicians point out that the Jew furnishes a 
large proportionate quota of the insane. The enemy of 
the Jew has been quick to attribute his nervous diathesis 
to greed for gain, and to consanguineous marriages, and 
diabetes to overfeeding. Has it ever occurred to those 
who make such statements that the Jew comes of a studi- 
ous ancestry, that his weak muscular system and high 
nervous temperament are caused by student habits and 
religious zeal? The Jew is by custom and religion the 
most temperate man in the world. Diabetes is now be- 
lieved by many to be a disease of the nervous system. 
Have the critics ever endeavored to ascertain how many 
of their insane Jewish patients show a history of consan- 
guineous marriages? There are, unfortunately, many of 

^ " The Comparative Infrequency of Tuberculosis among Jews." American 
Medicine, November 2nd, 1901, 
- Practice of Medicine, p. 320. 



330 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

our Russian co-religionists in " the living death " at the 
institutions for the insane of Illinois at Elgin, Watertown, 
Kankakee, and Dunning. In the few cases which I have 
been able to investigate I have not found one with a his- 
tory of the marriage of near relatives. It is to be hoped 
that some neurologist will give us ample statistics on this 
subject. 

Among a learned people, where one rarely finds an il- 
literate man, where the field for gaining a livelihood has 
been narrowed down by the oppressor, and where religious 
enthusiasm is at its height, we need not look further for 
causes of the high-strung nervous system and relaxed 
muscularity of the Russian Jew. 

Venereal disease is less frequent than among many 
other classes. Early marriages prevent in a measure that 
promiscuous association which so often causes infection. 
Home life and purity are encouraged. It is considered 
an act of charity to help an orphan or friendless girl to 
marry. Frequently collections of money are made to start 
a young couple in life. The professional matchmaker 
facilitates matrimony among all classes. 

The religious marital bath is largely patronized by the 
women. This institution was created by men, who were 
the law-makers. They forgot to make like laws for them- 
selves. Let us hope that they thought their superior in- 
telligence did not need the the whip of religion, and that 
they were as cleanly as they commanded their wives to be. 
Assuredly the religious bath is a wise institution for the 
ignorant. Specific disease is not absent but is rare even 
among the lowest class of orthodox Jews. 

During the year 1900 the Ninth Ward (formerly the 
Seventh) had a remarkably low death rate in spite of its 
unfortunate environments. To every 1,000 of population 
the proportion was 11.99. For comparison, the following 
figures as to death rates are quoted : 

To every 1,000 of population, 1900: Philadelphia, 
19.38 ; New York City, 19.59 ; Chicago, 14.68 ; Twenty-third 
Ward, Chicago, 18.69; Twenty-ninth Ward, Chicago, 
15.62 ; Ninth Ward, formerly the Seventh, Chicago, 11.99. 

The Twenty-third and Twenty-ninth Wards have about 
the same number of inhabitants as the Ninth and similar 
poor housing conditions. The annual death rate for sev- 
eral years for these three wards is appended : 





CHICAGO 




33 




SEVENTH 


TWENTY-THIRD 


TWENTY-NINTH 


YEAR 


(now ninth ward) 




WARD 


WARD 


1891 


16.80 




19.74 


19.38 


1892 


14.18 




17.22 


16.43 


1893 


11.92 




13.38 


16.86 


1894 


12.34 




11.32 


14.27 


1895 


14.01 




14.71 


14.81 


1896 


12.96 




12.27 


15.57 


1897 


12.34 




13.09 


13.10 


1898 


13.37 




14.81 


14.37 



These figures, taken from Chicago's public health re- 
ports, show a constant low death rate for eight years in 
the Russian Jewish settlement. 

Some writers have claimed for circumcision that it will 
prevent zymotic disease. The practice is universal among 
Russian Jews, yet statistics covering fifteen years for what 
was formerly the Seventh Ward indicate as large a ratio 
of deaths from this class of cases, as compared with the 
total number of deaths, as in any ward in Chicago. The 
experience of physicians here is that typhoid fever, scarlet 
fever, croup, diphtheria, smallpox, diarrheal diseases are 
not especially respecters of the persons of the orthodox. 
A writer in an American medical journal^ recently com- 
plained of permitting ritual circumcision by any but regu- 
larly qualified physicians. We should reinforce his ef- 
forts in behalf of the Jewish infant. Much mischief is 
done by mohelim who are not competent surgeons. A 
thorough knowledge of asepsis, hsemostasis, and stimula- 
tion are necessary for the work. It should at least be 
done under the supervision of a physician, and only with 
his permission. 

It is the custom in orthodox homes to bury the dead 
within twenty-four hours after death, and with but little 
exposure. The body is not allowed to remain on the fam- 
ily bedding but is removed to the cold, bare floor. The 
custom is crude and primitive, yet the early removal of 
the dead from among the living is best where disease may 
cause infection. The washers of the dead are not paid. 
They do the work as an act of charity for rich and poor 
alike. Flowers are forbidden. Simplicity is the rule. 
Every visitor to the house of the dead is enjoined to wash 
his hands before returning home. Doctors who know the 
customs of the people often advise the washers to use an 



* Ferd. C. Valentine, M. D., " Surgical Circumcision," Journal of the Ameri- 
can Medical Association, March 16, 1901. 



332 HEALTH AND SANITATION 

antiseptic solution for their hands after they have per- 
formed their service. This should be made compulsory. 

An insurance agent whose patronage is largely among 
Russian Jews states that they are considered excellent 
risks by all life insurance companies. I have been unable 
to procure figures as to the average life of the Russian 
Jew, but for the Jew in general the expectation of life is 
greater than that of the people among whom he lives.^ 

The Russian Jew is accustomed to self control. He 
loves his family. He is very rarely guilty of murder. 
His wife and daughter are chaste and moral, statements 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Sifted down we find 
such statements based largely on hearsay evidence or on 
exceptional cases of moral depravity. Those who know 
the people well and can judge them without prejudice 
realize that there is no class who have so little vice among 
them. Who better than the physician has the opportunity 
of knowing the birth of illegitimate children ? To a popu- 
lation of over 20,000 West Side Jews there are probably 
not over ten illegitimate births a year. The mothers are 
usually young, almost children, and the fathers not always 
Jews. The calculation was made after careful inquiry 
among physicians who have a large West Side practice. 

The low dance hall does not exist as we see it in some 
other wards of large cities. The young people do attend 
dances, but in the same way as the sons and daughters of 
the wealthy go to South Side club " receptions '' and 
^' parties," namely, for innocent amusement and for socia- 
bility. 

The working girl on the West Side indulges in wine 
more rarely than does her wealthier sister. Her mother 
does not play poker and whist. If fashionable clubs were 
raided as much as poor saloons the gambling passion would 
be found in the former just as much as in the latter. 

The small boy is the small boy here as elsewhere. He 
needs careful guarding and guiding. When the home is 
healthful and wholesome and the mother intelligent he may 
be under her watchful eye. When homes are cubbyholes 
and mothers incompetent, he seeks diversion elsewhere. 

Russian Jewish women have been instructed by their re- 
ligion to care for their persons, pots and pans. Educa- 
tion must be added to cultivate the sense of the aesthetic. 

* See article " Expectation of Life," Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. V. 



CHICAGO 333 

We have in these people an illustration resulting from the 
notion that it is the woman's business on earth only to 
bear children. To care for the home and to train the 
children requires as cultivated a mind as does any noble 
profession. This the parents of the Russian girl have not 
always realized. These women have only their intuitive 
sense of goodness and their religious instruction to guide 
them. Sometimes they are stubborn and will not allow 
the daughter to inaugurate her better way in the home. 
Often there is a pitiful breach between parents and chil- 
dren owing to differences in tastes and ideas. 

Some of the Russian Jewish people are so poor that 
they permit their women to be used for teaching purposes 
during childbirth. This saves for them the obstetrician's 
fee. Chicago medical colleges draw their obstetrical in- 
struction largely from Jewish mothers. From one to four 
students usually witness the birth at the home of the wom- 
an. Colleges vie with each other to get these obstetrical 
" cases." 

There are some who see the faults of the Russian Jew 
through a magnifying glass and hasten to proclaim them 
from the house tops. They do not seek to find his virtues 
and are surprised when these are pointed out. Very often 
his critics have never associated with a single Russian 
Jewish family on terms of equality. Their ideas are gath- 
ered from mendicants whom they meet in connection with 
the charity societies. Many of these critics know nothing 
of the Russian Jews as a whole. They see them through 
a charity office, which is a clearing house for the poverty 
stricken, the unfortunate, or the degraded. To judge a 
whole people in this way is like judging the ocean by the 
foam on its waves. 

There is a tendency now among Russian Jews to take 
up agricultural pursuits. An agitation is afoot to build 
a gymnasium and to establish an employment bureau in 
connection with the proposed Hebrew institute. All this 
will help toward other occupations than in shops and fac- 
tories. The Russian Jew has awakened to the necessity of 
self help and co-operation. As he progresses he will be on 
a par physically and financially where he already is men- 
tally and morally. The necessity in reference to Russian 
Jews in America is to help them to help themselves. They 
have intelligence. With the acquisition of other qualities 
they will take an important place in the community. 



X 
LAW AND LITIGATION 



(A) NEW YORK 

1. By Walter Scott Andrews, M. A. 

2. By Adam Wiener 

Treasurer Society for the Aid of Jewish Prisoners, New York City 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 
By Isaac Hassler, LL. B. 

Member Philadelphia Bar 



(C) CHICAGO 
By Elijah N. Zoline 



335 



LAW AND LITIGATION 

(A) NEW YORKi 



The student of the comparative criminology of the city 
of New York is confronted at the outset, by the difficulty 
which arises from the lack of unity in the systems of classi- 
fication of nationalities, adopted by the various agencies 
whose reports furnish him with his material. The Bureau 
of Municipal Statistics would perform a signal service in 
securing the adoption of a common system, and the value 
of a vast amount of matter would be increased a thousand- 
fold. The classification is too summary, in the otherwise 
valuable reports of the Board of City Magistrates, and the 
same may be said of the reports of the Board of Health. 
While the following study is based partly upon estimates, 
the results are, it will be seen, in general confirmed by 
comparisons of actual counts. The estimates of popula- 
tion are calculated from the police census of 1895, which 
places that of the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx 
for that year, at 1,851,060.- The population of the two 
boroughs for 1898, the year chosen for this investigation, 
was, according to the estimate of the Board of Health, 
1,976,600. Besides the authorities named, recourse has 
been had to the report of the Commissioner of Immigration 
for 1900, and valuable suggestion has been derived from 
an interesting series of papers published by Judge Deuel, 
president of the Board of City Magistrates, in Town 
Topics,^ and from his report for the year 1898. Judge 
Deuel reaches the comforting conclusion that, upon the 
whole, serious crime in New York city is on the decrease. 
His tables show the same large relative proportion of crim- 

^ The study by Mr. Andrews was originally published in the Year Book of 
the University Settlement Society of New York, 1900. 

' See Report of the Board of Health, 1895. 

^ The papers were published at intervals in Town Topics during the years 
1897 and 1898, and were summarized in two articles, which appeared during the 
jnonths of September and November, 1898. 

336 



NEW YORK 337 

inality among the natives of the United States as is shown 
in the table given below, and the proportionate contribu- 
tions of the various nationalities are constant enough, 
within certain limits, to justify us in taking the records 
of a given year as a term of comparison. The basis for 
the study is the record of persons actually held for trial 
or summarily tried, by the police magistrates. It is only 
of these that the details as to nationality are given, and, 
moreover, they furnish better evidence of presumptive 
criminality than do the mere arraignments. 

The lower East Side of New York lies mostly within 
the jurisdiction of Essex Market police court, which ex- 
tends over a region bounded by East Eiver, Catharine 
Street, the Bowery, East Houston Street, Clinton Street, 
Avenue B, and Fourteenth Street. An estimate of its 
population for 1898 places it at 351,800, or 17.85 per cent, 
of the total population for the boroughs of Manhattan 
and the Bronx. In 1897 the births, where both parents or 
the mother only were natives, constituted but 14.80 per 
cent, of the whole number in the district; while those in 
which the mother only or both parents are given as Polish- 
Russians, were 40.35 per cent, of the total number. Be- 
sides this, both parents or the mother only in 30.07 per 
cent, of the total births were classed as ** from other coun- 
tries," and these include large numbers of Austrians 
(Poles, Hungarians), and some Roumanians. The German 
births contribute 5.90 per cent., the Italian 6.33 per cent., 
and the Irish but 2.55 per cent., the mother, at least, be- 
longing to the country named. These figures are adduced 
to give statistical support to what is a matter of common 
knowledge; namely, that a study of the lower East Side 
of New York in any aspect, is a study of the population 
which constitutes the recent and present immigration from 
Eastern Europe to this country, an immigration consisting 
mostly of Jews, one of the most important displacements 
of sections of the race known in history, and one which 
has resulted in making of New York perhaps the most 
populous Jewish city that has ever existed. The tables 
given below are intended to show, first: the general rela- 
tions of the lower East Side to its chief lower criminal 
court, Essex Market court (the Third District), by a com- 
parison of the total number of persons held for trial, or 
summarily tried and convicted in this court for certain 
specified offenses, with the whole number so held or so 



338 . LAW AND LITIGATION 

tried and convicted, in the two boroughs of Manhattan 
and the Bronx ; second, the proportion of the criminality in 
the district which may be attributed to the Russians, they 
being the only nationality of those named above which re- 
ceives a place by itself in the classification adopted by the 
Board of City Magistrates. As it is eminently true of a 
district v/hich includes the Bowery within its limits, that 
a certain proportion of the crimes and offenses committed 
there are committed by non-residents, further tables are 
given, showing the proportionate contributions of the Rus- 
sians, as well as those of natives of the United States and 
of each of several nationalities for the two boroughs, both 
in the matter of total criminality as compared with popu- 
lation, and in the matter of the commission of the same 
crimes and offenses specified in the previous table. If we 
leave aside the figures of population, and consider the pro- 
portionate contribution of a given nationality to the sum 
total of criminality as its norm of social activity in this 
direction, we will have a term which v/ill permit us to dis- 
cover in what direction the given nationality is disposed 
to sin most. And in this comparison we will have the 
advantage of relying entirely upon records, and not at all 
upon estimates. Following Judge Deuel's scheme in gen- 
eral, but not in detail, the crimes the commission of which 
involves the implication of moral turpitude head the list. 
Then follow less serious offenses — the assaults which are 
mere quarrels, the larcenies which may be mere detentions 
of goods. Next are placed three offenses — the keeping 
of a disorderly house, gambling and the keeping of a 
gambling house — in which convictions, and even the ar- 
raignments are so few as to suggest that, apart from the 
difficulty of securing evidence, they are regarded with a 
certain degree of benignity by the police.^ In this group, 
and in the last, where convictions are numerically very 
few, percentages would be misleading and the actual num- 
ber of cases is given. 

Table I. showing (1) The total number of persons held 
or summarily tried and convicted for certain specified of- 
fenses in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx for the 
year 1898, as shown by the report of the Board of Police 
Magistrates for that year. (2) The proportionate con- 

1 This is truer of the period under consideration than it is now. 



NEW YORK 



1339 



tribution, according to nationalities, in the two boroughs 
(3) The proportionate contribution of the population 
within the jurisdiction of Essex Market police court, and 
the share of the Russians in the criminality of the district. 



C u (y o 



O "i '-' o <x 



Assault (felony). .. 

Burglary 

Forgery 

Homicide 

Larceny (felony) .. 

Robbery 

Assault (Misde- 
meanor) 

Disorderly conduct 

Disorderly person. 

Intoxication . 

Larceny (M isde- 
meanor) 

Vagrancy 

Violation of Corp.. 
Ord 



531 

769 

58 

81 

1,590 

232 

1,313 

23,503 

544 

12,955 

2,511 
5,149 

9,808 



44.2 
65.4 
58.6 
42.8 
55.6 
62.5 

43.3 
43.2 
43.7 
42.0 

57.1 
49.6 

12.2 



14 
9.9 
6.9 

21.4 
8.3 

15.6 

8 

17.1 
12.1 



13.2 
25.4 



7.1 
10.1 

8.7 
11.9 
10.0 

6.46 

7.6 

9.7 
17.8 
8.0 

9.8 
13.6 



18.6 
3 6 
3.4 
6.0 
4.5 



14.9 
6.2 
2 3 
1.3 

4.9 
1.2 

19.5 



4.3 
5.9 
10.3 
6.0 
9.0 
2.7 

5.9 
10.1 
10.6 

1.5 

6.1 

1.8 

17.7 



2.6 
0.5 



0.4 



1.6 
1,5 
2.2 
1.3 

0.16 
0.6 



Ph 



4.3 
3.1 

3.4 
10.7 
6.7 
2.7 

3,5 
5.4 
6.6 
2.0 

4.14 
2.7 



10.5 
23.8 
13.8 
47.6 
18.5 
17.7 

10.7 
26.0 

19.8 

27.8 

15.4 

19.2 



8.6 20.1 02. 4 



.2 ^ 

-- U UJ 



0, <u o 



23.1 
20.2 
62.5 
12.5 
33.0 
9.8 

35.0 
32.0 
42.6 

3.7 

27.7 
3.25 



ACTUAL NUMBER OF CASES 



Disorderly House. 
Gambling . .. 


154 
33 

66 
17 
8 

10 
36 


36 
11 


2 
6 


41 
13 


8 



40 

1 




18 


83 


37 


Gamblingr House 
Abduction 






20 


8 


6 

3 

5 

10 


1 
2 

■3' 


1 
1 
2 
2 


5 

1 


3 


1 
1 




3 




1 






Rape 


15 


2 


1 


1 


' 


1 







Table II. — Distribution of criminality according to na- 
tionality in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, for 
the year 1898, according to the report of the Board of City 
Magistrates for that year. The percentages in the last 
column are taken as the normal contributions of the given 
nationalities to the total criminality. By comparing this 
percentage with the percentages under the nationalities in 
Table I, the offenses in which a given nationality sur- 
passes its general average, and those in which it is inferior 
to it, are shown : 



340 



LAW AND LITIGATION 







Total number 




Per cent, per- 
sons of given 
nativity held 
for trial or 






of persons 


Per cent, of 


s u m m a r i ly 


Nativity 


Population 


held for 


given nation- 


tried and 






trial, or 


ality to total 


convicted, to 






summari- 


population 


whole num- 






ly tried and 




ber so held, 






convicted 




or tried and 
convicted 


United States 


417,100 


26,995 


21.1 


40.2 


Ireland 


409,200 
434,700 


13,137 
6,454 


20.7 
22.0 


19.5 


Germany 


9.6 


England 


42,500 


2,030 


2.15 


8.0 


Scotland 


13,800 


555 


o.r 


0.8 


France 


11,900 


982 


0.6 


1.5 


Italy 


120,600 


4,641 


6.1 


6.9 


Russia 


221,300 
5,000 


5,481 


11 2 


8.2 


Greece 


3,659 


0.25 


5.4 


Other countries.. 


300,500 


3,267 


15.2 


4.9 


Totals 


1,976,600 


67,201 


100.00 


100.00 



With 17.85 per cent, of the total population of the two 
boroughs, that within the jurisdiction of Essex Market 
court furnishes 22.13 per cent, of the total criminality, 
23.8 per cent, of the burglaries, 47.6 per cent, of the 
homicides, far more than its fair share of the cases of 
disorderly conduct and intoxication, and somewhat more 
than its proportion of vagrants. It is below its reputation 
in its contribution of both grades of assault. The Rus- 
sians in the district are prominent in their commission 
of forgery, violation of corporation ordinances, as dis- 
orderly persons (failure to support wife or family), both 
grades of larceny, and of the lighter grade of assault. The 
reputation for general restlessness of the clientele of Essex 
Market court seems to be due to the large proportion it 
furnishes of the totality of arraignments, namely 28 per 
cent. These and the numerous summons he is asked to 
issue, often for trivial causes and petty quarrels, may well 
furnish a magistrate with a vast amount of unpleasant 
business. 

Turning to the other tables, we find that the Russians, 
with 11.2 per cent, of the whole population, furnish but 
8.2 per cent, of the criminality, and applying this last 
figure, which is their percentage of the total criminality 
(apart from any question of population), to the per- 
centages in the list of specified offenses, we find that they 



NEW YOIiK 341 

surpass their norm iu some of the same offenses which 
furnish their contribution to the criminality of the East 
Side, i e., forgery, felonious larceny, as disorderly persons, 
and as violators of corporation ordinances; but that, as a 
whole, they are far below their average in the commission 
of assault. The Russian on the East Side seems somewhat 
more inclined to violence than his compatriot in the city 
at large. He is notably but little addicted to intoxication, 
and furnishes a very small proportion of vagrants. This 
sobriety and this avoidance of the workhouse are also char- 
acteristic of the Italians, who, on the other hand, are more 
addicted to violence. Further comparisons will be left to 
the reader, but attention may be called to the remarkable 
fact that the very small population of Greeks in the two 
boroughs commit more than 33 per cent, of the violations 
of corporation ordinances. The high contribution of na- 
tives, shown also in Judge Deuel's table, is worthy of note, 
in that the relative position toward crime of the native of 
the United States, as compared with that of the foreign- 
born citizen or resident, shown by the United States census 
of 1890, seems reversed. The discrepancy is probably due 
to the fact that the census counts as foreigners, the chil- 
dren born in the United States of parents born abroad, 
while these appear as natives in the tables here used. 

Turning to the civil courts, we find no such official de- 
scription of their business as is furnished by the reports 
of the Board of Magistrates, but must rely upon the sum- 
mary statements issued by the commissioners of accounts, 
supplemented, it is true, by the information furnished by 
ihe valuable report of the Legal Aid Society. Thanks are 
also due to Judge Roesch, of the Fourth District municipal 
court for statistics of his court. The litigation of the 
lower East Side is transacted in the Fourth and Fifth 
District municipal courts, which include in their jurisdic- 
tion the district bounded by the Bowery, Fourteenth 
Street, East River, and Catharine Street. Below are given 
tables comparing the number of summons issued by them 
to those issued in the First and Eighth Districts. The 
First District transacts an abnormally large proportionate 
business, because it is the down-town court most convenient 
to the offices of business men and lawyers, and the court 
naturally used in many cases where one or both of the 
litigants is a non-resident with a business office in the city 
of New York. The Eighth District court, on the West 



842 



L.4TT' AND LITIGATION 



Side, witk a jurisdiction extending from Fourteenth Street 
to Fortieth Street, and from Sixth Avenue to Hudson River, 
is chosen for a term of comparison, because a compara- 
tively large proportion of the population which resorts to 
it is native born. 

Table III. showing the number of summons issued in 
the specified district courts — both actual, and per 1,000 
of population, and the proportion of free to paid summons 
in each court: 



MUNICIPAL COURT 



Population, 189S 

Population, proportion to total.... 

Paid summonses 

Free summonses 

Total both 

Summons per 1,000 of population. 

Summons per 1,000, 1S90 

Proportion of free summons 

Proportion of free summons, 1899, 
Nativity: percentage of 100 births: 

Both parents U. S 

Both parents Russian 



FIRST 


FOURTH 


FIFTH 


DISTRICT 


DISTRICT 


DISTRICT 


.56,120 


197.600 


235,100 


2.84% 


10% 


11.9% 


5,260 


2,795 


3,239 


135 


1,650 


1,543 


5,395 


4,445 


4,782 


96.1 


22.5 


20.35 


85.5 


22.3 


20.89 


2.5% 


37 % 


32 % 


3.6% 


34.6% 


38.6% 




13 % 


8.7% 




42.6% 


42.6% 



EIGHTH 
DISTRICT 



163,020 

8.25% 
1,799 
695 
2,494 
15.30 
13.01 
27.8% 
32.6% 

38.7% 
2.6% 



Table IV.— Municipal 
cases ( dispossessions ) . 



courts — Landlord and tenant 



MUNICIPAL COURT 



Population, 1898 

Dispossessions, actual number, 1898 
1899 

per 1,000, 1898 

1899 

" actual number, 1900 
per 1,000, 1900 



FOURTH 


FIFTH 


DISTRICT 


DISTRICT 


184,895 


219,751 


6,498 


9,372 


6,336 


9,853 


35 


42.6 


34 


44.8 


6,575 


9,767 


35.5 


44.4 



EIGHTH 
DISTRICT 



152,399 

4,868 

5,324 

31.9 

34.9 

5,156 

33.8 



These tables reveal it is true, a somewhat greater tend- 
ency to resort to litigation on the East than on the West 
Side; between 5 and 9 more people in 1,000 apply for a 
summons on the East Side than do in the Eighth District. 
But they reveal more strikingly the poverty of the dis- 
trict, in the large proportion of free simimonses issued. 
For a free summons can be issued only when the suit is for 
a smn of less than $50, or when a person sues '' in forma 



NEW YORK 343 

pauperis.*' The relatively greater number of evictions is 
evidence of the same poverty, and so is the large business 
done by the East Side Branch of the Legal Aid Society. 
This business consists largely of efforts to recover small 
sums of money due as wages ; $15 would be a high average 
for all the claims brought to its notice. Many letters are 
v/ritten for the recovery of sums of less than $1, and 
suits brought for the recovery of $5, and of even smaller 
sums. Seventy-five per cent, of its business is done for 
Polish and Russian Jews, 50 per cent, of the remainder for 
Austrian and Roumanian Jews. 

Of the total number of judgments obtained, quite a 
large number are returned unsatisfied (no larger a pro- 
portion, however, according to the society's marshal, than 
in other districts of the city), and this fact might be ar- 
gued in support of the accusation that the East Side acts 
upon a low standard of commercial honesty. But a com- 
parison instituted in this manner is not fair. Of the 
total number of applications to the society, many are 
settled without recourse to the courts, and many are set- 
tled before judgment. In a list of 261 suits examined, 88 
were dismissed or discontinued, or resulted in judgments 
for the defendant; 79 were settled or reported settled; 39 
judgments were satisfied, thus leaving 55 cases or a little 
more than 25 per cent, only, of executions returned unsat- 
isfied. Quite as consonant with the facts at hand as the 
theory of commercial dishonesty would be the one of 
the prevalence of a spirit of enterprise out of proportion 
to the capital of the community; and the frequency of 
settlements before final judgment may well mean that in 
a majority of cases the cause of the non-payment of wages 
is the sheer inability to pay. With regard to the accusa- 
tion of untruthfulness so freely brought against the liti- 
gants of the district, statistics are silent, and the matter 
must be one of personal impression. In the course of an 
experience of several months in the East Side office of the 
Legal Aid Society, the writer believes that usually he has 
listened to the truth, often colored, of course, by the bias 
of the relator. The actual and complete denial of a claim 
is not frequent. 

To sum up: The interpretation of these figures seems 
to show that, judged by the records of the police courts, 
the native of the United States is, in the city of New York, 
at least, a more frequent criminal than is the foreign-born 



344 LAW AND LITIGATION 

resident or naturalized citizen. They confirm to a certain 
degree the reputation of the lower East Side for general 
lawlessness, but absolve the Jew, as judged by the Russian, 
who is shown to constitute a probably preponderating ele- 
ment in the population, from anything like a proportion- 
ate contribution to this lawlessness, excepting as to a few 
specified offenses. Examining the record of the Russian 
in the city at large, it is found that he furnishes a low 
proportion of the general criminality, Avith a relatively 
high percentage in the matters of forgery, felonious lar- 
ceny, refusal or inability to support his family, and in the 
violation of corporation ordinances. The records of the 
civil courts seem to show him to be rather more litigious 
than the average citizen, but they show him, above all, to 
be poor. As to the matter of commercial dishonesty, the 
statistics at hand do not justify the accusation, in more 
than a limited degree, and as to that of untruthfulness, 
they are silent. A low criminal record, somewhat liti- 
gious, very poor, yet "furnishing an extremely low con- 
tingent to the vagrant classes, these are the characteristics 
of the East Side Jew, as judged by the Russian. If, from 
the economic standpoint his very poverty renders him an 
undesirable competitor, his combination of thrift with 
sobriety and his slight tendency to crime may well be 
set off as compensating qualities in any estimate of his 
value as a future citizen. 



Thirty years ago the conviction of a Jew for a felony 
was almost unheard of in the city of New York. To-day 
there is not one penal institution within the area of the 
Greater New York which does not harbor some offenders 
of the Jewish people. 

It is not difficult to realize the effect of having 
thousands of Russians and other wandering Jews and 
their families turned loose on Manhattan Island,^ caus- 
ing them to drift into the Ghetto of our metropolis and 
other congested districts, where immorality and squalor 
march hand in hand, and side by side. The Jew has 
been tainted by the new city life into which he has been 
cast. 

If the tribe of Baron de Hirsch would only multiply 



NEW YORK 345 

and increase as the tribes of Abou Ben Adam, how many 
of these poor families might be removed from poverty, 
hunger and dirt to peaceful pastoral sections of our coun- 
try, there till the soil and thrive in the agricultural pur- 
suits as some now do in New Jersey. 

Appreciating the need of having good Jewish influence 
brought to bear upon the minds of these offenders and to 
better them, the Society for the Aid of Jewish Prisoners 
was ushered into existence in 1891 to take up the work 
that had been looked after by the Conference of New York 
Rabbis. Its object is " to improve the moral condition of 
Jewish prisoners in the state of New York, and to lend 
them a helping hand after their release from penal in- 
stitutions. ' ' 

Under the guidance of this organization. Rev. Dr. A. M. 
Radin holds divine services at the Penitentiary and Work- 
house, Blackwell 's Island, on every Saturday ; at the House 
of Refuge, Randall's Island every Sunday; at the Kings 
County Penitentiary in Brooklyn every other week and 
at the Tombs Prison on Mondays. At Sing Sing Dr. 
Israel Davidson makes frequent visits, conducts meetings, 
and looks after the Jewish prisoners. He also performs 
a similar task at the state penal institution at Naponach. 
At Auburn Rev. Dr. A. Guttman, of Syracuse, is the Jcav- 
ish chaplain, and at Clinton Prison (Dannemora) Rabbi 
Judelson officiates. 

The crimes of the Russian Jew are more or less of a 
nature similar to those of other nationalities and races, 
although the basest of crimes, murder and manslaughter, 
are practically unknown to them. 

Some years ago there was a tendency to commit arson, 
but this too has become almost entirely eliminated from 
the category of offenses among the immigrant Israelites. 
Most of the offenses are committed by the children of 
immigrants, who have been contaminated by the vice of our 
great city and who spurn the advice of their elders, whom 
they frequently term *' greenhorns '^ and who are unable 
to exert the necessary influence over them or to command 
the proper respect. 

Offenders guilty of petty larceny and other misdemean- 
ors or of a grand larceny in a minor degree are generally 
committed to the Blackwell 's Island Penitentiary and about 
eight per cent, of the prisoners at that institution arp 
Jews. This includes persons arrested for selling or ped- 



346 LAW AND LITIGATION 

dling on the streets without a license, who are unable to 
pay a fine. 

Vagrants, drunkards, and disorderly characters are com- 
mitted to the Work House at Blackwell's Island, and 
it is gratifying to learn that at all times less than two 
per cent, of the two thousand inmates of that institution 
are of the Jewish persuasion. 

At the Kings County Penitentiary in Brooklyn there are 
comparatively few males and it is indeed a rarity to 
find a Jewish girl or woman on the roll. 

At the Tombs Prison and Ludlow Street Jail, where per- 
sons under indictment are detained, pending trial, the num- 
ber varies. 

About ten per cent, of the young people at Elmira Re- 
formatory are Jewish, but this includes unfortunates from 
all over the state of New York. 

At Auburn Prison there are generally less than a dozen 
Jewish convicts sentenced for heinous crimes out of a total 
of more than thirteen hundred. 

The same average holds good for Clinton Prison; and 
at Sing Sing where the New York City convicts, who 
have committed felonies, are incarcerated, the average 
number is less than ten per cent, among the Jev^^s. 

* ' Evil associations corrupt good morals, ' ' is applicable to 
the conditions existing in the so-called Ghetto of Nev/ 
York City. During the regime of Tammany Hall the 
lower East Side of New York City was a hot bed of vice 
and immorality and the *' red light district," as it was 
termed, became as offensive a glare to the eye as the Tam- 
many rule was a stench to the nostrils. 

Young men and women were lured away from their 
parental roofs and employed as '* cadets " to aid as bad 
a gang of degenerates as ever lived in a civilized com- 
munity and the then chief of police looked on, and retired, 
or rather was turned out of office, after Tammany's de- 
feat on the ill-gotten gains of his office. 

Young working girls were scoffed at by those who wore 
silks and satins and had money in their pockets; while the 
former wore rags and had barely a few coins that they 
could consider their own. The bad influence and effects 
can readily be imagined. From lives of immorality de- 
veloped vagrancy, petty thefts, and more serious offenses. 
The banal influence of some of the wretches who called 



NEW YORK 347 

themselves men and women, not only on girls but on boys 
as well, can be pictured without much difficulty. 

Another trait developed by this state of affairs was gam- 
bling and when the losses in gambling became extensive, 
the temptation to forge and steal developed but too soon. 

How could such influences help but offset the virtuous 
instincts of a parental abode, a father's advice, or a moth- 
er's prayer? 

There was but one solution when the reform government 
entered on its duties under the leadership of Mayor Low, 
whose efforts for good were directly turned towards ame- 
liorating the conditions of these depraved and downtrod- 
den Jews and Jewesses, and whose noble purposes must 
be thoroughly appreciated, — to prosecute all offenders and 
purify the congested quarter of the great metropolis. 

Through the suggestions of this administration the 
youthful criminals, or rather offenders, were separated 
from the hardened convicts, as will appear later. 

All offenders are brought before a magistrate's court 
and where the charge is one of disorderly conduct, vagran- 
cy, disturbing the peace, etc., the court sentences them to 
Blackwell's Island for a few days or sometimes for some 
months, and sometimes simply imposes a fine and if it is not 
paid the culprit is sent to the Workhouse on Blackwell's 
Island. 

In instances where a misdemeanor is committed, such as 
petty larceny, grand larceny in a minor degree, assault in 
a minor degree, and the like, the accused is held under 
an amount of bail for the court of special sessions, pre- 
sided over by three justices at a session — and without a 
jury — whose authority extends to sentencing offenders 
for any period not exceeding one year and in imposing 
fines not in excess of five hundred dollars. Before the case 
reaches the court of special sessions an indictment must 
have been found by the grand jury. 

In other instances, where the more serious and heinous 
crimes are committed the city magistrate holds the pris- 
oner, with or without bail, as the exigencies of the case 
may require, for the grand jury, and in some cases such 
matters are submitted to the district attorney in the first 
instance, and he may take the initiative in submitting the 
facts to the grand jury. After an indictment has been 
found, the prisoner, where he cannot or may not give bail, 
is confined in the city prison, familiarly called the Tombs, 



348 LAW AND LITIGATION 

until his -case is reached in the court of general sessions 
of the peace, or occasionally in the criminal term of the 
supreme court, both of which are conducted under the 
jury system. 

Upon conviction the prisoner may be sentenced to any 
of the state prisons and fined, or in case of minor offenses, 
which are sometimes disposed of in the last named court, 
to the penitentiary. 

In Brooklyn there is also a court of special sessions, and 
the Kings County court which possesses criminal jurisdic- 
tion in Brooklyn takes the place of the court of general 
sessions in New York. 

Women convicted for felonious crimes are committed to 
Auburn or to Blackwell's Island or to some reformatory, 
while males are sent to any one of the penal institutions 
herein referred to. 

During the past two years a number of excellent in- 
novations have become established tending towards pre- 
serving youth under sixteen years of age from contamina- 
tion with older and more hardened and confirmed crim- 
inals. 

Wherever a boy or girl of tender years is brought before 
a magistrate, except in heavy criminal cases, the matter is 
referred to one of the justices of the court of special 
sessions who presides over a part called the children's 
court in an entirely separate building away from the en- 
vironments of the criminal tribunals. 

The courts have parole officers whose duty it is to super- 
vise the conduct and movements of the youthful offen- 
ders, on whom sentence is suspended. These parole offi- 
cers report to the court front time to time, and if the 
reports are favorable the culprits are again free to go 
where they please and are thus saved from the evil sur- 
roundings of a criminal atmosphere in penal institutions. 

This parole system is also in vogue in the magistrate's 
court and frequently sentence is suspended pending favor- 
able reports submitted to the court by parole officers. 

Mrs. Sophie C. Axman, a Jev/ess, who co-operated with 
the Educational Alliance and looked after the parole cases 
in the children's court, has now been appointed chief 
parole officer by the board of justices of the court of special 
sessions. 

In all of the penal institutions, religious services are 
held for the Jewish inmates by Jewish rabbis, with the 



NEW YOBK 349 

possible exception of the protectories. At the Catholic pro- 
tectory the boys are taught useful trades and if at any time 
a Jewish rabbi desires to interview Jewish children he is 
generally received very cordially. 

In sending children or young men to a reformatory the 
judge or magistrate selects the institution which is conduct- 
ed in conformity with the religion of the prisoner. 

Last year a certificate of incorporation was granted for 
a Jewish protectory to be managed on the lines similar to 
the Catholic protectory. Several meetings of the incor- 
porators of the new Jewish Protectory and Aid Society 
have been held in New York City and more than two 
hundred thousand dollars have already been subscribed 
by Jewish members of this great municipality, men whose 
wealth of heart is commensurate with that of worldly 
goods, and it is to be expected that in the very near future 
ground will be bought and buildings erected on the cot- 
tage system, and wayward boys and girls taught trades 
of all kinds. Under the state laws and county regulations 
the society will receive $2 per week or $114 per annum 
for each youth cared for, but it is estimated that it will 
cost again as much to maintain the inmates and the re- 
mainder of the requisite fund will be raised through do- 
nations and annual dues. Hon. Julius M. Mayer, who was 
recently elected attorney general' of New York state, is the 
president of the new society. Its work will, beyond doubt, 
be far reaching. "When a youthful offender receives his dis- 
charge from the protectory he will be proficient in the 
trade which he has learned and able to support himself 
in a respectable manner. Through the co-operation of the 
societies having a hand in the work of the Removal Bureau 
he may be sent to other parts of the country to work at 
his trade, to support himself and others, and bequeath to 
the next generation a fair type of American manhood. 

No particular mention has been made as to the litigation 
in the criminal courts applicable to Jews for the reason that 
they are all on the same plane with others. 

In cases where a Jewish prisoner or other wishes to 
stand trial and has no attorney the court will always 
name some member of the bar to defend the case, and 
there are always interpreters to assist, although there are 
instances of miscarriage of justice at times. 

However, we may be fairly well satisfied with the con- 
ditions during the past year in New York, when we realize 



350 LAW AND LITIGATION 

how vastly different the empire state treats its Jewish 
offenders compared with almost every European nation, 
other than those of the English-speaking countries. 

After a Jewish prisoner is discharged, having completed 
his term of imprisonment, Jewish societies give him a 
helping hand, and in some instances lead him back into the 
paths of virtue; often, too, to the greatest paradise on 
earth, a happy Jewish home circle. 



(B) PHILADELPHIA 

What is the relation of the newly arrived Jew of East- 
ern Europe, generally termed for convenience, the Russian 
Jew, to American law? In the absence of statistical infor- 
mation or because of ignorance of his peculiar mental and 
native equipment, erroneous conclusions might be arrived 
at. The conspicuous presence of the Russian Jew in our 
courts calls occasionally for hasty, often prejudiced opin- 
ions, which the light of the real facts must dispel. If the 
Russian Jew seems to appear with frequency in the courts, 
the tendency of the observer, however calm and reserved, 
to magnify the impression of a novel and individual spec- 
tacle must not be forgotten. In the general melange of 
all kinds of persons of which the assemblage at the courts 
is made up, few will specially attract the eye save those 
who are distinguished by some peculiarities of appearance 
or address or language. Recent immigrants of any nation- 
ality almost will be liable to the distinction. The " out- 
lander ' ' is very easily singled out from the throng in what- 
ever country he may be. But in our courts many national- 
ities, such as English, Irish and German, for obvious rea- 
sons, will attract but little special attention because of 
their near approximation to accepted American types. 
But when to a latent prejudice is added the striking in- 
dividual appearance of the Russian Jews, it will be seen 
that the impression made by them, standing out clearly as 
they do in the eye of the observer from the rest of the 
crowd of litigants and suitors, may easily be exaggerated, 
and a rapid judgment will come to the sincere but perhaps 
erroneous view that Russian Jews make over frequent ap- 
pearance in the public forums. Under such circumstances 
' * one swallow may make a whole summer. ' ' This caution 
is here expressed because the writer has found the view to 
exist upon the part of many persons that the Russian Jew 
is unduly litigious. 

Something needs also to be said of the Russian Jew^s 
previous life and circumstances. His status under the 

351 



352 LAW AND LITIGATION 

laws of his native land is uncertain. The only certainty 
consists m the restrictions which are laid about him and 
which forbid his assertion of public rights of the common- 
est order. He is not equal with Russian Christians before 
the Russian law. It must not be supposed that this dulls 
his desire for the rights that are withheld and makes him 
indifferent to their acquisition or importance; on the con- 
trary, as is natural with any people, particularly a people 
of strong intellectual and moral fibre, the desire is 
merely whetted by deprivation. Again, in consequence of 
this civic discrimination and by force of Russia's policy 
with respect to him, the Jew is shut out of the current 
of the national life, such as there is, and is thrown 
back upon himself. From the cares of every day exist- 
ence, his religion and its books are his recreation, nay, even 
the chief aim and purpose of his life, and discussion of 
Jewish law, particularly as contained in the Talmud, be- 
comes the intellectual bread upon which his strong men- 
tality is nourished. The Jewish law will rival in every 
respect the most important bodies of law which have ap- 
peared among men in history; it has its codes and codi- 
fications, digests and dicta, precedents, professors and stu- 
dents, great underlying principles, refined scholastic dis- 
tinctions, quibbles and strength, as have all systems of law. 
It differs from any modern system in that it makes no 
distinction between civil law and moral law; all the 
'' civil " law is moral law and all the " moral " law is 
civil law, a thing which is not true of the common law in 
force in England and many parts of the United States, 
in which obligations ex foro CGnscientice are not necessar- 
ily enforceable in foro legis. There is a whole great range 
of hum.an relations, rights, and obligations into which the 
common law does not enter and with which it does not con- 
cern itself, but the Jewish law concerns itself with all 
relations between men, and even between men and God, 
and has been the supreme regulation of Jewish life for long 
centuries. An aptitude for law, an appreciation of its 
value, a delight in its intellectual contests, and a reverence 
for its decision is a natural inheritance of the Jewish peo- 
ple. The repressions of Russian policy do not destroy 
this abiding faith in law; and the freedom of America 
encourages it. So much for a few points of general ap- 
plication. 

The situation of the Russian Jew in Philadelphia does 



PHILADELPHIA 353 

not differ materially from his situation in other cities of 
similar size except in a small degree caused by local pe- 
culiarities. He is alert, progressive, and thrifty.. He en- 
ters quickly into business and by hard work and energetic 
application has made a place for himself in a short time. 
He is fairly successful in the small shop and by gradual 
stages comes to have the large manufacturing establish- 
ment, and his signs may be seen in all the important 
wholesale streets of the city. He is a handicraftsman and 
an employer of labor, and there is probably no branch 
of trade in which he is not represented in some way. In 
the mazes of business and investment with others, intri- 
cate relations result naturally in a proportionable amount 
of *' lawing " and its incidents. He is a quick student 
and has early learned the lesson that legal advice in time 
is a preventive of law suits; conscious of certain handi- 
caps of speech and the other concomitants of a foreign 
birth, he avails himself freely of the training and skill 
of the lawyer. 

An important part in the legal life of the Russian Jew is 
played by Russian Jewish notaries public. A number of 
Russian Jews hold commissions as notaries and have offices 
in the Russian Jewish district. Their contact with law 
gives them a smattering of legal knowledge and they not 
only authenticate papers notarially, but do a quasi-legal 
business, drawing with more or less skill contracts and 
papers, engaging in real estate transactions, insurance, and 
the like, and acting as semi-professional, semi-friendly ad- 
visers generally. These " notary public shops," as they 
have been aptly termed, are the necessary local requirement 
of a people who need legal services and who turn naturally 
to those they know best for such assistance. Usually there 
is a qualified attorney-at-law who either maintains a branch 
office with the notary public or to whom the latter refers 
the more difficult part of his business. 

No other class of citizens not native born figures as large- 
ly in the civil lists of the courts, because no other class 
as quickly makes its way in the industrial world and enters 
so keenly into its life and intricacies. But as compared 
with the whole population, and keeping in view the Rus- 
sian Jew's business interests, statistical data do not show 
any undue litigiousness.^ Of a total of 1,330 cases listed 

^ It is estimated that there are about 100,000 Jews in Philadelphia (of whom 
76,000 are Russian Jews), out of a total population of 1,300,000 for the city. 



354 LAW AND LITIGATION 

for trials in a trial term of the Philadelphia courts of com- 
mon pleas, Russian Jews were plaintiffs or defendants or 
both in 112 cases, a percentage of 8.42 ; a similar list of 770 
cases of another period showed 54 Russian Jewish cases, a 
percentage of 7.01. The percentage of Russian Jewish cases 
may safely be placed between seven and eight, a result veri- 
fied from other court list data. This is close to the Rus- 
sian Jew's actual percentage of population and would 
indicate a closer identification with its business and other 
interests than is the case with other immigrant peoples, 
whose percentage of '' lawing " is not so high and whose 
activities are correspondingly not so great. The figures 
therefore show not an indication of obnoxious assertive- 
ness, but a plain result of business and industrial activity. 

In the magistrates' or justices' courts (having a civil 
jurisdiction of cases where not more than one hundred 
dollars is involved) no very accurate information is ob- 
tainable, owing to their number and the relative inaccessi- 
bility of their records. Certain magistrates in sections 
of the city near to the Russian Jewish districts have a 
large proportion of their business emanating from Jews. 
The cases are vigorously pressed and as vigorously fought, 
but one of the magistrates, who had a large amount of 
this class of business, informed the writer that there is 
a strong tendency to arbitrate cases, and this is a well 
known practice, whether before or after a case is begun 
in court. Some rabbi, a well-known banker, or business 
man, a notary public, is selected as arbitrator and the diffi- 
culty is peaceably adjusted. The rabbi has great influence 
in this direction and it would seem is most frequently the 
arbitrator. 

A reference to his standing in the world of real estate, 
including its buying, selling, mortgaging and the like, 
which is closely allied to the world of general law, will show 
that the Russian Jew is alive to the merits of the build- 
ing association system, and to the merits of real estate, 
whether for investment or personal use. A considerable 
number of Russian Jewish real estate brokers, agents 
and dealers of good standing, whose clientele grows rap- 
idly beyond the Russian Jewish circle, attests his active 
participation in this important field. The daily news- 
paper lists of real estate transactions show an increasing 
number of Jewish names ; and the Russian Jew is well repre- 
sented at the sales at leading real estate exchanges. 



PHILADELPHIA 355 

That he is provident is markedly shown in these real 
estate dealings. He buys real estate with the idea of 
saving his money ; he buys when he has but a small amount 
of money to invest, leaving the rest upon easy payment 
mortgage, which he slowly and surely pays off, though his 
earnings be but small; he buys not expecting or antici- 
pating to be foreclosed, but intending to save and 
eventually to acquire clear a home, a shop, or an invest- 
ment, and the mortgage acts as a spur instead of a weight. 
Hence he is considered a good " moral risk " in the mat- 
ter of mortgage loans. He is besides steadily advancing 
into the field of the larger real estate and building opera- 
tions. 

The field of criminal law presents some interesting 
features. There is a considerable amount of this class 
of litigation. There was a time when the presence of a 
Jew in the criminal court was of exceeding rarity; it is 
not so now. Yet this important fact must be remembered ; 
as noted above, when the Russian Jew does appear his 
striking individuality will stand out in such strong relief 
as to leave a lasting impression and draw many to the 
conclusion that the Jew is occupying a considerable part 
of the time of the criminal court. The writer has heard 
court officers speak in this way; they forget the thousands 
of cases in which men of no special peculiarity appeared 
in court but remember with great vividness the Jews who 
pass before them. This is understandable, but quite 
wrong. An illustration of how this alien appearance works 
against the Jew may not be out of place. If a Jew in 
business difficulty should confess judgment to those whom 
he wishes to prefer among his creditors, the fact would 
be remembered, while if it were done by a non-Jew, no one 
would remember it as a tendency of the particular class. 
Recently a large corporation with public purposes confessed 
judgment in favor of certain creditors who were also its 
managers and officers; by this process a large number of 
claims against the company were effectually rendered 
worthless. The matter attracted passing attention but it 
will certainly not be stigmatized as a characteristic of the 
people who effected this highly inequitable result. Yet 
the incident was as flagrant as any that could be cited. 

An examination of the kind of crimes prevalent among 
Jews reveals no cause for serious alarm. The majority 
are assault and battery cases of a trivial description and 



356 LAW AND LITIGATION 

they arige quite naturally. The living together in large 
numbers, several families in a house, the keen business 
rivalry, l3ring, with a people of the excitable, nervous tem- 
perament of the Jew, frequent occasions when high words 
pass and — infrequently — a blow is struck; — infre- 
quently because in many cases the whole trouble is mere 
hot language and threatening gestures. As the slightest 
touching in anger is in technical law a battery, ample ma- 
terial for a prosecution on the part of an angry man or 
woman is provided. Not unusually the other party, 
spurred on by the institution of legal proceeding and as 
a measure of protection by way of counter offense, insti- 
tutes a cross-charge, and it is found that a large proportion 
of these Russian Jewish assault and battery cases consists 
of counter bills. The result is generally that by the time 
the matter comes to court, both parties, now in cooler 
blood, are heartily sick of the whole matter, a better feel- 
ing ensues, and both cases are submitted by agreement and 
dropped. When they proceed so far as a trial, it gen- 
erally results in the jury acquitting both sides, being 
unable to determine from the conflicting evidence who is 
guilty; the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven 
controls and there is a happy ending for the contestants. 
But not infrequently the mediation of some cool-headed 
friend, who makes an appeal to their good '' Jewish feel- 
ing," produces the desired result of peace. 

These conclusions are not merely the result of collated 
opinions of those informed on the subject, but are verified 
by statistical data. The result of one hundred and sixty 
assault and battery cases against Jewish defendants 
tried in the Philadelphia courts in one year was but 
twenty-nine convictions and one hundred and thirty-one 
acquittals. 

Other crimes committed by Jews are quite below the 
proportion in the whole community. Some of them grow 
out of the Jew^s prominence in business. Cases of lar- 
ceny by bailee arise, as where in a dispute over the amount 
due by a manufacturer of clothing to a finisher, the finisher 
retains the articles until he is paid, and the manufacturer 
causes his arrest. These are really civil disputes, which, 
however, may be brought technically within a criminal 
statute; they are generally settled amicably. Isolated 
cases of embezzlement, forgery, larceny, malicious mischief, 
conspiracy, receiving stolen goods and the like, sometimes 



PHILADELPHIA 357 

technically, sometimes substantially true, occur, but they 
are not unduly frequent. 

Before the institution of the juvenile court, a consid- 
erable number of larceny cases appeared against Jews; so 
also a fair number of malicious mischief cases. Many of 
these were cases of petty depredations by boys which would 
now be met by the more adequate remedies of the juvenile 
court. It is true that the once unsullied name of the Jew 
is not now unsj^otted, but the fault is not so much with 
the Jew as with those trying conditions, for which he is 
not responsible, under which these deplorable results have 
appeared. The tyranny practiced against him in his old 
home and the utterly different conditions of American life 
to which he is suddenly transported, conditions of bad 
housing and the like, and the demands of a business world 
whose prevailing standards are not always of the highest, 
demanding tense vigilance and strenuous zeal, contribute 
to the cause. 

Data of tried cases in a year show the following results : 
Twenty cases of obtaining money or a valuable thing by 
cheating or misrepresentation showed four convictions and 
sixteen acquittals; four cases of receiving stolen goods re- 
sulted in one conviction and three acquittals; five cases of 
perjury resulted in no convictions and five acquittals; of 
arson not a single case was found during the year in ques- 
tion; homicide is almost unknown. 

If the keeping of bawdy houses and prostitution, once 
practically unknown among Jews, have made their ap- 
pearance in Philadelphia as in other American cities, it 
is to be remembered that the former freedom of the Jews 
from these evils rather over-emphasizes their spread. 

Some curious violations of the criminal law and the 
laws of marriage occur through reliance upon the pro- 
visions of the Jewish law, in ignorance of the law of the 
state. The gett ( divorce ) duly granted according to the 
Jewish law, is of course of no avail in the courts here, 
though it is in Russia. 

Similarly cases of marriage within consanguineous de- 
grees forbidden by the state law but allowed by the Jew- 
ish law and innocently contracted, have arisen. No dis- 
position of the authorities to punish innocent defendants 
in such cases appears. The rabbis have taken some steps 
to prevent this conflict of laws, one suggestion being a 



358 • LAW AND LITIGATION 

refusal fb grant the Jewish divorce until the civil divorce 
has been obtained. 

The following data of the inmates of prisons and reform 
institutions in Philadelphia are of interest: 

In the Eastern Penitentiary (prisoners committing the 
graver crimes in the eastern part of Pennsylvania are sent 
to this prison) there were on November 17, 1904, in all 
1,121 prisoners, of whom 20 were Jews, a percentage of 
1.78, which is very small as compared with the percentage 
of population, which is 7.7 per cent. Of these, 11 or not 
quite one per cent, of the whole number of prisoners, were 
Jews of Eastern Europe, Russia, Austria, etc.; 7 were 
Jews born in the United States, one in England, and one 
in Scotland. The nativity of the parentage of these has 
not been ascertained. The following were the crimes com- 
mitted by the Eastern European Jews : Murder 1,^ lar- 
ceny and receiving 1, larceny and entering 2, burglary, 
larceny and horse stealing 1, false pretenses 1, forgery 1, 
counterfeiting 1, assault and battery with intent to rape 1, 
distilling whisky without giving bond 1, breaking and 
entering 1. 

In the Philadelphia county prison the total number of 
convicts (December 12, 1904) was 509, of whom 18, or 
3.54 per cent., were Jews. Of these, 12, or 2.36 per cent., 
of the total number of prisoners, were born in Russia, 3 in 
the United States, 2 in Germany and 1 in England. The 
following were the charges: Larceny 6, aggravated as- 
sault and battery 2, forgery 3, receiving stolen goods 3, 
robbery 2, burglary 1, involuntary manslaughter 1. 

Grouping these data it is found that Jews are inmates 
of the prisons for serious crimes to the extent of 2.66 per 
cent., while the Jew's percentage of the population is 7.7 
per cent., or nearly three times as great. 

Juvenile delinquency among Russian Jews has perhaps 
aroused the most discussion. The causes of this are again 
largely economic; housing conditions are bad; the parents 
are hard-working and too busy with earning the liveli- 
hood to pay sufficient attention to their children, who, left 
to themselves, learn idle or vicious habits on the streets 
and in the thousand ways of imitative childhood. Besides 
many children very early help in the family support and 
as newsboys in large numbers on the streets and in the 

^ As noted above, it is an isolated case. 



PHILADELPHIA 359 

lower classes of employment are deprived of the oppor- 
tunity of refining influences. In addition, the child, quick- 
ly Americanized, speedily finds a gulf between itself and 
its parents in respect of religious and other sentiments, and 
the parental authority grows less and less of a restraint. 
The juvenile court, with its system of probation officers, 
and Jewish agencies and the settlements and other kindred 
institutions, is working acceptably with this condition. 

In the House of Refuge for boys at Glen Mills, Pa. 
(which is a high grade corrective institution and not a 
prison), out of a total of 766 inmates, 61, or 7.96 per cent., 
were Jews, almost all of whom were Eastern European. 
Of these, twenty-seven were charged with larceny, twenty- 
four with incorrigibility and the others with various de- 
linquencies, such as running away from home, fighting, 
keeping bad company, malicious mischief, and the like. 

In the Girls' House of Refuge, out of a total of 127 in- 
mates, 8, or 3.81 were Jewish, all charged with being 
incorrigible. 

There is no specifically Jewish institution to receive de- 
linquent children, but Jewish organizations are providing 
private places for their care. There is no doubt that the 
previous rarity of delinquency of this kind among Jews 
accentuates the dismay felt at its recent manifestation. 
As economic conditions better for the Jew, however, 
and as some of the agencies now at work grow in 
influence and assist where the parents are unable to in- 
fluence, the matter will be adjusted. 

The Russian Jew on the whole appears in a favorable 
light from the standpoint of the law. Such criticisms as 
may be made are apt to be exaggerated, and where just 
should rather be made against conditions for which he is 
not responsible and of which he is the victim. He has not 
lost his character as, and is pre-eminently, a law-abiding 
citizen, earnestly interested in the welfare of the state, and 
no less keenly alive to his civic responsibilities than to his 
civic privileges. 



(C) CHICAGO 

I shall first review the litigation most common amongst 
Russian Jews in the civil branch of the courts. They are : 
Suits growing out of contracts of bargain and sale of mer- 
chandise, personal injuries, matters relating to personal 
property, marriage and divorce, real property, bankruptcy. 

A little more than half of the Jewish population in the 
city of Chicago are engaged in the mercantile business 
and hence disputes often arise as to the quality of the 
goods, manner and time of delivery and similar matters. 
Suits are also frequently brought for goods sold and de- 
livered. In most of the cases, there is generally a good 
and bona fide defense. Cases of this kind seldom go by 
default, unless the defendant be a bankrupt, or contem- 
plates bankruptcy. The courts, however, are not much 
bothered with litigation of this class. A great many of 
the cases are tried and disposed of by arbitration, or are 
submitted to the orthodox Jewish rabbis for decision. In 
this connection, it is worth while mentioning that the ortho- 
dox Jewish rabbis of this city have organized a tribunal 
with all the formalities and forms prescribed by the Tal- 
mudic law, which has proven a blessing to the Jewish 
community in keeping the people out of courts. Matters 
are disposed of with great dispatch and all parties inter- 
ested seem to be always satisfied. 

Personal Injuries. Since so large a portion of the Jew- 
ish population is engaged in industrial pursuits, working 
in factories of every description, which are operated by 
dangerous machinery, many become injured in the usual 
course of such employments. The number of injured Rus- 
sian Jews is augmented by the terrible condition of the 
street car system of the city of Chicago. It is a note- 
worthy fact that during working hours it requires a great 
effort for a workingman to reach home. Conductors do 
not stop at the crossings, the cars are always overcrowded; 
people become maimed in their efforts to either get on or 
off the cars. As a consequence considerable litigation is 

360 



CHICAGO 361 

pending in our courts in behalf of Russian 'Jews, growing 
out of personal injury sustained by them, either during 
their employment or while going or coming from work. 
There are very few suits of this kind pending against 
them as defendants. 

Marriage and Divorce. There is considerable litigation 
in the courts growing out of the relation of husband and 
wife. Hasty marriages and marriages on the part of girls 
for the sake of quitting work in the sweat-shops or other 
undesirable factory places, without regard to the fitness 
and temperament of contracting parties, are in a great 
measure responsible for this condition, but with all this, 
it cannot be said that there is a greater percentage of di- 
vorce cases than among other nationalities in Chicago. 

Real Estate. To judge of the progress that Russian 
Jews have made in this city, we must take into considera- 
tion the large extent of real estate acquired by them within 
the last fifteen years. It may be said with a certainty that 
65 per cent, of all the real property in the so-called Ghetto 
district, comprising the portions of the Ninth, Tenth, 
Eleventh, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Wards 
occupied by Russian Jews, is owned by them. This is ex- 
clusive of real estate owned by Russian Jews in other parts 
of the city of Chicago and county of Cook. It is natural 
that men owning real estate should have disputes with 
tenants and hence litigation growing out of the relation- 
ship of landlord and tenant, but during all my experience 
as a practicing attorney among Russian Jews I did not find 
one case of a heartless landlord in the true sense of the 
word, but in most instances there were circumstances, some 
in favor of the plaintiff and others in that of the defend- 
ant, which at least justify litigation in court. The 
proportion of suits of this kind is considerably less among 
Russian Jews than among other classes of citizens in the 
city of Chicago. 

Bankruptcy. The Russian Jew arriving in this country 
without capital usually establishes his business with a small 
capital, saved up as result of hard work. A recent immi- 
grant, he is not in a condition to enable him to scrutinize 
business transactions without blunder. He is not yet up 
to the nice business tricks practiced by the Boards of Trade 
and the great financiers and business men of America, 
who are so proficient in organizing trusts and corporations. 
Therefore he frequently mistakes the course of action necr 



362 LAW AND LITIGATION 

essary ia his business ventures and as a consequence is 
sometimes led into bankruptcy. Russian Jews were there- 
fore obliged to avail themselves of the benefit of the bank- 
ruptcy law. An investigation of the clerk's office of the 
district court of the United States in Chicago discloses the 
fact that every Russian Jew who filed a petition in bank- 
ruptcy was granted a discharge by the courts, thus show- 
ing a presumptive absence of fraud in business transac- 
tions. 

Crimes. There were a number of cases tried in the po- 
lice courts against Russian Jews, in which men were 
charged with abandonment of wife and children, but in 
most cases the magistrates effected a reconciliation and the 
charge was dropped. I could find no record in the criminal 
court of any case against a Russian Jew charged with ab- 
duction of an unmarried female. No indictments were 
found in the year 1904 against a Russian Jew or Jewess 
on the statutory crime of abortion. No convictions were 
had in the criminal court on the charge of adultery. 

The oft-repeated charge of arson against the Jews finds 
no substantiation in the annals of the criminal court of 
Cook County. During the year 1904 not a single Jew was 
indicted by the grand jury on a charge of arson. The po- 
lice courts in the Ghetto districts are often called upon to 
try cases of assault and battery, but in a majority of in- 
stances there is no prosecution when these cases are called 
for trial. There were three convictions of Russian Jews 
in the criminal court, during the years of 1903 and 1904 on 
the charge of bigamy; they were brought about by the 
energetic action of the United Hebrew Charities. There 
were no indictments against Russian Jews on the charge 
of bribery within the last fifteen years. There were three 
cases of burglary against Russian Jews during the year 
1904, resulting in two convictions. 

Four Russian Jews were convicted during the years 1903 
and 1904 for conspiracy to commit an illegal act. Cases of 
embezzlement and extortion by threats were quite rare; 
while there might have been cases of this kind in the police 
courts very few of them ever reached the criminal court. 
There were a number of cases in the criminal court against 
Russian Jews on the charge of obtaining goods under false 
pretenses, but in most instances there were acquittals. 
There were no convictions of any Russian Jew on the 
charge of forgery in the criminal court within the last three 



CHICAGO 363 

years. Ten Russian Jews were convicted for bucket-shop- 
ping. Two Russian Jews were tried and convicted in 1904 
for manslaughter. In both cases, insanity was the defense. 
During the entire history of the criminal court of Chicago 
there was not a single case of a Russian Jew on the charge 
of incest or kidnapping. About twenty Russian Jews, 
mostly junk dealers, pa^^ni-brokers, and second-hand deal- 
ers, were indicted during the year 1904 for receiving stolen 
property. One of the convicted men was sentenced to the 
penitentiary and the others received jail sentences and were 
fined. There were no convictions on charges of malicious 
mischief and mayhem, and no indictments for perjury 
were returned during the year 1904. Not a single Russian 
Jew was convicted on the charge of vagrancy. 

Violations of City Ordinances. It is a fundamental 
principle of law that everybody is supposed to know the 
law and that ignorance of the law is no excuse. The word 
' ' law ' ' includes the common law, constitutional law, statu- 
tory and municipal ordinances. 

It is monstrous to suppose that a Russian Jew, a recent 
immigrant, should know all these laws, much less the mu- 
nicipal ordinances which are passed at one session of the city 
council and repealed at another. (In this connection, T 
call attention to the legal absurdity, that while everybody 
is supposed to know of the existence of municipal ordi- 
nances, the judge who tries the case is not supposed to 
know that such an ordinance in fact exists. He takes no 
judicial notice of a municipal ordinance unless it has been 
exhibited to him in proper form and proved up in accord- 
ance with all the rules of evidence.) 

It is therefore natural that there should be violations 
of municipal ordinances, because of the ignorance of the 
people of the existence of such ordinances, and not neces- 
sarily because of a desire to violate them. Russian Jews 
are frequently the victims of police officers, who delight in 
arresting for a violation of a city ordinance with prospect 
of the harvest of the ward politicians and professional 
bailers, who are always on hand to help out a * * friend. * ' 

The information furnished above is based upon personal 
investigation and knowledge of the writer with litigation 
among Russian Jews during a law practice, in the city of 
Chicago, for the past twelve years. 



XI 
DISTKIBUTION 



By David M. Bressler 

General Manager Industrial Removal Office, New York City 



365 



DISTRIBUTION 

A consideration of the status of any people would be 
incomplete without determining the effect of their geo- 
graphical situation. This is particularly applicable to the 
Jews, because of their remarkable adaptability to environ- 
ment. The Jew in America is still a stranger in a strange 
land. True, there are a few who can boast of two or three 
generations in this country, but they are largely in the 
minority. 

There is only one noteworthy tendency that can be ob- 
served in the distribution of the Jews in this country that 
is different from the tendencies in other large classes of 
immigrants. Scandinavian immigrants, for instance, are 
largely found in one section of the country, in the wheat- 
fields of the Northwest. Italians are where there is need 
for laborers in gangs or for what might be termed itinerant 
labor. The Slavs from Russia and Austria are in the min- 
ing districts. These three large classes of immigrants move 
along simple, well-defined lines. The distribution of the 
Jews, though not so well defined on the surface, is due to 
tendencies that are peculiar to himself. Having been a 
city-dweller for centuries, the love for city life is strong 
within him. We cannot therefore expect to find him on 
the prairies of the West, in the coal mines of the East or 
the plantations of the South. We see him in the larger 
cities of the country, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. 
Louis, Cincinnati, San Francisco and others nearly as 
large; and wherever he is found in the smaller towns and 
villages, the original settlement, we can rest assured, was 
made by those whose headquarters had first been a large 
city in the vicinity. 

This being practically the only phenomenon to be ob- 
served in the distribution of the Jew in America, how 
meagre was our knowledge of the situation, and how un- 
satisfactory and discouraging to those who realized that 
the peculiar conditions attendant upon the large influx of 
Jews and their consequent congestion in the sea-port towns 

366 



DISTRIBUTION 367 

made it necessary that they be distributed. Either the 
courage of those who undertook the enterprise must be 
commended or the pressing need deplored, or, perhaps, 
both. Artificial distribution was begun four years ago and 
the movement, self-styled " Industrial Removal," has be- 
come known in every city and town in the country where 
Jews are to be found. Whether this stimulated distribu- 
tion will show results markedly different from those con- 
sequent upon a more natural distribution cannot, of course, 
be accurately determined for some time. Be that as it 
may, however, the movement itself is most interesting and 
the results thus far obtained will be instructive in throw- 
ing some little light upon the question as a whole. 

In consequence of the many restrictive laws of Roumania, 
there began in the year 1900 a large influx of Roumanian 
'Jews into this country. The normal Jewish immigration 
then averaged about 45,000 annually, the majority of whom 
remained in New York, which city already at that time 
contained over 500,000. This large immigration has been 
going on since 1881 ; over 70 per cent, of those who arrived 
in the United States remained in New York. One of the 
results of this movement was the gradual congestion of the 
immigrant population in one part of the city, called the 
East Side. So much has been published of the conditions 
prevailing in the so-called New York Ghetto that it is not 
necessary here to dwell upon them. 

Those who were actively interested in the question of 
Jewish immigration realized that, though the conditions 
in Roumania demanded the continuance of this immigra- 
tion, it was essential to divert the stream away from New 
York. They understood, too, that the problem of Jewish 
immigration to the United States was not local merely be- 
cause the vast majority of ocean steamships disembarked 
their human cargoes in the harbor of New York. They 
argued that these people do not come to New York; they 
come to America, and so the question of immigration is 
of national interest; that is to say, it was incumbent on 
Jews all over the country to help bear the burden of car- 
ing for these friendless refugees and making them self- 
supporting. The plan to be pursued, therefore, must be 
one by which the immigrants were to be distributed all 
over the country, in towns where economic and industrial 
conditions are better than in the metropolis. 

The question that arose in the minds of these men was 



368 DISTRIBUTION 

how to arouse the Jewish communities to a sense of their 
duty in accepting as many as they had reasonable assurance 
of placing in self-supporting positions. What agency 
could be employed that would effectively reach these com- 
munities? The answer to this query was the Independent 
Order B'nai B'rith. It was peculiarly fitted to undertake 
the stupendous task of distributing these immigrants upon 
their arrival by virtue of its character as a strong and com- 
prehensive organization, represented in most important 
towns and cities in the Union. The Executive Committee 
of the B'nai B'rith issued bulletins to the various lodges 
in the West and South, explaining the situation, earnestly 
requesting them to organize in such a way as to make it 
possible to effect the purpose in view. As a result of the 
encouraging assurance of co-operation on the part of these 
lodges, a committee was organized in New York for the 
purpose of handling the situation in systematic fashion. 
This committee established a local office, whose business it 
became to open communication with the lodges which had 
responded, and to prosecute the work of distribution prac- 
tically. 

In a short time it was discovered that there were many 
difficulties in the way of conducting this v/ork successfully, 
by no means the least of which was the necessity of over- 
coming the unwillingness of the newly-arrived Roumanians 
to leave New York after they had found friends and rela- 
tives there. Owing to this difficulty, and also to the fact 
that there were many Jews in New York from other coun- 
tries who were also out of work, the subject acquired a 
new aspect. The conviction forced itself upon the minds 
of the committee that in order not to augment the conges- 
tion in New York, particularly in view of the fact that in 
addition to the Roumanians, there were thousands of Rus- 
sians and Galicians constantly coming, it was necessary 
that a process of clearing the way should be put into exe- 
cution. The number of Roumanians sent away was so 
small as hardly to affect the conditions here ; and, as these 
conditions were not improving, it was decided to extend the 
privilege to all of our co-religionists who were out of work 
and who showed promise of becoming self-supporting. 
This conviction showed itself in a practical manner in the 
establishment of the Industrial Removal Office in February 
of 1901. 

Removal work was undertaken with well-defined pu^'poses 



DISTRIBUTION 369 

in view. On tlie one hand it was to assist in making self- 
siipporting those nnemploj^ed Jews of New York who were 
willing to go West or South. On the other hand these 
persons were to become the centres of attraction for others 
in Europe who were destined for the United States. That is 
to say, they were to become a means to divert those immi- 
grants from New York to various points in the interior who 
would under any circumstances come to this country, and 
who would otherwise take up their domicile in New York. 
As far as the former function is concerned, the Industrial 
Removal Office is a philanthropic institution seeking to bet- 
ter the social and economic conditions of New York Jews. 
The other purpose it is seeking to carry out is broader and 
has as its motive the desire to establish a permanent plan 
of relief for thousands of Jews, who in the aggregate pre- 
sent a serious problem to American Jewry. The movement 
in its conception is thoroughly rational and scientific, be- 
cause it is, so to speak, cleansing and inoculating the entire 
body by local treatment, and in so doing it is at the same 
time helping to relieve the local distress.^ 

Hon. Frank P. Sargent, Commissioner General of Immi- 
gration,2 stated: '^ In my judgment the smallest part of 
the duty to be discharged in successfully handling alien 
immigrants with a view to the protection of the people and 
institutions of this country is that part now provided for 
by law. Its importance, though undeniable, is relatively 
of secondary moment. It cannot, for example, compare in 
practical value with, nor can it take the place of measures 
to insure the distribution of the many thousands who come 
in ignorance of the industrial needs and opportunities of 
this country, and, by a more potent law than that of supply 
and demand, which speaks to them here in an unlmown 
tongue, colonizes alien communities in our great cities. 
Such colonies are a menace to the physical, moral and po- 
litical security of the country. They are hotbeds for the 
propagation and growth of those false ideas of political 
and personal freedom, whose germs have been vitalized by 
ages of oppression under unequal and partial laws, which 
find their first concrete expression in resistance to the con- 

ipor detailed information of the actual results of removal work see reports 
of Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society for 1901 1902 and 1903. 
See also paoer read before Jewish Chautauqua Summer Assembly m 1903, and 
paper read 'before the Third Conference of Jewish Chanties in the United 
States, New York, 1904. 

^Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immtgration, 1903, p. 60. 



370 DISTRIBUTION 

stituted' authority, even occasionally in the assassination of 
the lawful agents of that authority. They are the breed- 
ing grounds, also, of moral depravity ; the centres of prop- 
agation of physical disease. Above all, they are the con- 
gested places in the industrial body which check the free 
circulation of labor to those parts where it is most needed 
and where it can be most benefited. Do away with them 
and the greatest peril of immigration will be removed. ' ' 

The Commissioner's official recommendation v/as antici- 
pated when the Removal Office was established; that is to 
say, artificial distribution is of itself one of the strongest 
advocates of unrestricted immigration and will continue to 
be so as long as it is effective. Whether the Removal Office 
has been effective in carrying out its objects can be judged 
by the actual results thus far obtained. Though four years 
seem a very short time in which to pass upon the results 
of the work, it is not excessive enthusiasm that prompts 
those engaged in it to say that it has evolved out of its 
experimental stage and has shown its necessity for con- 
tinuing, so long as large members of Jews emigrate. Of 
course the movement must be judged in its two aspects. 
As a philanthropic undertaking it has assisted over 16,000 
persons to become self-supporting, who before were on the 
verge of dependency. So far as its second function is 
concerned, the results, though not quite so definite, are still 
encouraging to a surprising degree, as those results were 
not expected to be seen for years to come. The percentage 
of those Jewish immigrants who remained in the city in 
the years 1898 and 1899 was 79.9 per cent, and 79.2 per 
cent, respectively. These, it should be noted, are the two 
years preceding the establishment of the Removal Office. 
In the year 1903, two years thereafter, the percentage of 
immigrants who remained in New York was 71.9 per cent., 
showing that about 8 per cent, more left for the interior 
in that year than in 1898 and 1899. Though this is not 
conclusive evidence that the diversion of Jewish immigra- 
tion has been effected so quickly, yet this discrepancy is 
due in a large degree to this artificial distribution. The 
records of the Removal Bureau also show a large number 
of persons that went into the interior directly from Europe 
to persons originally sent away by the Bureau from New 
York, who for the most part would have come to the sea- 
port metropolis had their relatives remained there. 

The results could have been much more imposing were 



DISTBIBUTION 371 

it not for a two-fold obstacle that has largely hampered the 
activities of the Bureau. It has taxed the energies of the 
management to the utmost to adjust and reconcile in every 
practical and legitimate manner the prejudice and timidity 
of the immigrant with the same qualities — in a different 
form — as the majority of the people of the interior com- 
munities. It has been a process mainly of gaining the 
confidence of the beneficiary on the one hand and of 
the benefactor on the other. The interior communities, 
realizing in a large degree the extreme and pressing neces- 
sity for the work, still failed at the beginning to thoroughly 
grasp the situation ; there was a sentimental desire on their 
part to help the refugees from Eastern European oppres- 
sion, but when they found that the practical manner of 
helping them along the lines of the Removal Office meant 
not only sacrifice of time and money, but real annoyance 
and disagreeable experiences, then their charitable senti- 
ment received a shock, from which some have not recovered 
to this day. Industrial conditions all over the country have 
also been such as to force restrictions upon orders for peo- 
ple and prevented the removal of some deserving persons 
wiio have been so unfortunate as not to come within the 
requirements demanded by the communities of the interior. 
All this has been the great difficulty on the one side. The 
obstacle to be met with in New York, on the other, has been 
the unwillingness on the part of the majority of the people 
to leave the city. Not merely have the attractions of the 
wonderful seaport metropolis held them back, but ignorance 
and consequent fear of the unknown and mysterious have 
largely deterred them from applying at the Bureau. Only 
such as have been possessed of a comparatively fearless 
and independent character, or who have received encour- 
aging reports from friends or relatives in the interior have 
had the courage to ask that they be sent away. This forced 
selection, artificial in a large measure, will probably show 
results different from that brought about by a natural dis- 
tribution. What this difference will be is hard to con- 
jecture. 

The Bureau has attempted to settle some of the more 
promising men in the small towns of the South and the West 
where few or no Jews are found. In a number of cases 
such settlement has been permanent, but better success can 
be obtained in settling the people in the smaller towns when 
such towns are within a reasonable distance of some large 



372 DISTRIBUTION 

city. THe Bureau's experience has shown that the best 
results can be obtained Avhere the artificial distribution 
observes as closely as possible the natural law of distribu- 
tion mentioned before. Indeed, of late the exigencies of 
the work have also helped to gradually develop a system 
of agencies in the large cities, which already have begun to 
place a portion of those sent them to the small towns and 
villages in their immediate vicinities. 

Though this law of distribution is practically the only 
definite phenomenon that has appeared, it cannot be 
doubted that the movement contains far-reaching possibili- 
ties. What the effect of this distribution will be ethnically, 
what it will be religiously, as well as what it will be eco- 
nomically are questions of intense interest, v/hich unfortu- 
nately cannot be answered at the present time. 

Then, too, the question can be viewed from the subjective 
standpoint ; that is, not merely as to the effect upon those re- 
moved, but what will it be upon those who are good enough 
to receive them? Among the many communities that have 
been enlisted in the cause of removal and who co-operate 
with warmth and sympathy with the Bureau are such as 
were practically altogether isolated from the rest of Amer- 
ican Jewry until after the visit of the Bureau's representa- 
tive. Such a visit not only succeeded in arousing their 
interest in removal work, but encouraged interest in other 
Jewish questions. In other words '' removal " has already 
shown itself to be a factor in arousing among our country 
cousins what is commonly called, in the pulpit, a Jewish 
consciousness. 

It is too obvious to require comment that a great many 
dependents apply at charitable institutions who are out of 
employment because there is no work to be found in their 
peculiar line. However, there may be a demand for work- 
men of just such trades in other cities in the Union. That 
is to say, much poverty is caused by the immobility of la- 
bor, and " inter-removal," so to speak, is a method of re- 
ducing this evil. For the present, of course, no such 
general scheme of removal would be justifiable in view of 
the pressing needs of the seaport metropolis, which is la- 
])oring under the enormous burden of a stupendous immi- 
gration. But should the happy time come when the stream 
of immigration is successfully diverted from New York to 
many points in the interior, then such a scheme would un- 
doubtedly be instrumental in helping a great many poor, 



DISTRIBUTION 373 

deserving persons and families in becoming self-support- 
ing, and in a manner containing elements of smaller danger 
than any other form of charity. 

The immigration of nearly one million Jews to this 
country since 1881 has made necessary various plans for 
their welfare, of which that for their distribution through- 
out the country should receive hearty encouragement. 



XII 
RURAL SETTLEMENTS 



(A) EASTERN STATES 
By Jacob G. Lipman, Ph. D. 

Soil Chemist and Bacteriologist 
New Jersey State Experiment Station 



(B) WESTERN STATES 
By Rabbi A. R. Levy 

Secreta/ry Jewish Agriculturists* Aid Society of America, Chicago 



375 



EUEAL SETTLEMENTS 
(A) EASTERN STATES 

THE SOUTH JERSEY COLONIES 

The southern part of New Jersey contains vast stretches 
of stunted pine and scrub oak. Traveling from Camden 
over the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad one soon comes 
into the heart of this region, the home of the garter snake 
and the hare. The silence of the tangled plain is unbroken 
save for the woodman's axe and the noise of the passing 
trains. Occasionally isolated farms and small villages come 
into view, and as they are passed the struggling vegetation 
again stands out against the arching sky. The train rushes 
on to the coast, but before the song of the ocean is heard 
many a mile of bushland must be passed. In the winter 
and in the early spring the piercing northern winds find 
little to stay their course ; they wail and bluster among the 
helpless pines ; they sing their sombre song down the chim- 
ney until one feels chilly and sad. In the late spring and 
summer the skies are sunny and mild; there is the briny 
flavor of the ocean in the air, the breeze laden with memo- 
ries of the sea is tender and caressing. But for the inex- 
orable mosquito one could wish for no kinder starry nights, 
with their fragrance, their indefinite noises, and their pass- 
ing music. Then come those incomparable autumn even- 
ings whose coolness does not chill one, but the warm, moist 
breath of the sea fills the heart with dreams and content- 
ment. The same moon that smiles on the ocean and plays 
with its waves raises misty shapes over the sandy plain, 
listens to the song of the whip-poor-will, and to the stridu- 
ous unceasing music of the cricket hosts. Such is the re- 
gion where Russian Jews have sought to gain a livelihood 
from a not over-rich soil. 

The first attempts at colonization in South Jersey date 
back to the early eighties of the nineteenth century. With 
an enthusiasm that often amounted to a creed, men from 

376 



EASTEBN STATES 377 

different walks of life worked side by side, dreaming of 
the regeneration of a race too long excluded from the field 
and the forest. Alliance, Carmel, Eosenhayn, and finally 
Woodbine grew up and led an existence unique in the his- 
tory of the race. Had the land been more responsive there 
would have been fewer neglected acres; as it is the many 
flourishing farms conquered from the wilderness by Jewish 
hands bear witness that from among the exiles from Russia 
there were men of earnest and steadfast purpose who 
shrunk from no hardship. Many years of self-denial and 
of unceasing toil have borne their fruit, and while one re- 
joices with those who succeeded, one cannot help thinking 
regretfully of those who found themselves compelled to give 
up the unequal struggle, and returned to the city and the 
tenement house. 

The spring of 1882 marked the arrival of the first Jew- 
ish settlers in South Jersey. In the place now called Alli- 
ance twenty-five families undertook to do the pioneer work 
of the settlement. The tract of land, comprising eleven 
hundred acres, was purchased for the purpose by the He- 
brew Emigrant Aid Society. It was for the most part a 
wilderness of bushland, and the few small areas that showed 
signs of a once attempted cultivation had again returned to 
their primitive state. Alliance is located in Pittsgrove 
township, county of Salem. It is thirty-three miles from 
Philadelphia, as the crow flies, rather less than five miles 
from Vineland, about nine miles from Millville, and almost 
ten miles from Bridgeton. Carmel and Rosenhayn, situated 
within a few miles of Alliance, were founded in 1883 ; the 
former by Michael Heilprin, the latter by the Hebrew Emi- 
grant Aid Society. Carmel and Rosenhayn are both situ- 
ated in Cumberland county, the one between Millville and 
Bridgeton, the other between Bridgeton and Alliance. 
Finally in 1891, the Woodbine colony was founded by the 
Baron de Hirsch Fund. Woodbine is in Cape May county, 
fifty-six miles from Camden and twenty-five miles from 
Cape May City. Within nine miles of Woodbine is Sea Isle 
City, and Ocean City is sixteen miles distant. The early 
days of Alliance, Carmel, Rosenhayn, and even Woodbine 
had many features in common. They needed all the enthu- 
siasm and determination of the would-be farmers, for it 
soon became evident that there were almost innumerable 
difficulties before them. The land had to be cleared and 
made fit to receive the seed, and months were to pass before 



378 . RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

any returns could be expected. Meanwhile they were 
obliged to live in barns or in over-crowded houses. Pro- 
visions were scarce, the roads were poor. In Alliance the 
colonists lived during the first year on $8 to $12 a month 
given to them by the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society. In 
Carmel and Rosenhayn they found what work they could 
with the neighboring farmers or secured tailoring work 
from the city. In Woodbine they were more fortunate in 
that there was enough to do for everybody in clearing a 
part of the fifty-three hundred acre tract of land, digging 
cellars, cutting out streets, building roads, and the like. 
It was hard work, especially for those not used to outdoor 
life. Yet with all the privations of overcrowded quarters, 
unsatisfactory food, and lack of warm clothing in the win- 
ter months, few complaints were heard. The work on the 
wind-swept plain was hard, but the management paid liv- 
ing wages and the colonists bore their hardships cheerfully. 
However, there came a time in the life of Woodbine — as it 
did with Carmel, Alliance, and Rosenhayn, — when the fu- 
ture seemed full of gloom. When the poor, wild soil did 
not yield what it could not yield, when willing hands failed 
to find work that would help fill the bread basket, and 
when the aid of charity had to be invoked ; then there was 
but little sunshine to cheer the dismal gloom. And the 
colonists had reason to feel discouraged. Theirs was a 
thin, shifting soil, which ages ago had been sorted and re- 
sorted by the waves, and the ocean was chary about leaving 
it little besides the rounded grains of quartz which compose 
98 per cent, of the soil. Long years of hopeless toil, theirs 
and their children's, were before them, and after all that 
v/ork honestly and conscientiously performed what would 
they have? Unlike the fertile plains of the northwest, or 
the Tcliernosyem of southern Russia, these South Jersey 
soils call for the application of manures or of commercial 
fertilizers, and without them they yield scarcely anything. 
But even with these in their possession the colonists were 
at a disadvantage. The use of artificial manures requires 
considerably more knowledge of the soil and of soil condi- 
tions than where none are used. The colonists had not that 
knowledge, nor the knowledge of market conditions in the 
large cities, or even adequate local markets. Yet if ^ the 
South Jersey colonies are to attain prosperity as agricul- 
tural colonies, or if they are to retain that measure of pros- 
perity which they have already achieved, they must have 



EASTEBN STATES 379 

local markets. It will be shown below that such markets 
can be had. As to the New York and Philadelphia mar- 
kets, the colonists found that their produce had to compete 
with the harvests of the alluvial soils of the east and the 
south, and the owners of these soils had the experience, the 
means, and the favorable railroad rates that the South 
Jersey settlers did not possess. The survival of the four 
colonies is due to the establishment of factories. In Alli- 
ance a cigar factory and later a shirt factory were in opera- 
tion during the early years. In Carmel and Rosenhayn, 
the shirt, wrapper, and clothing factories which were in 
operation at one time or another made possible the agri- 
cultural development that has taken place. In Woodbine 
the establishment of a village and factories was provided 
for by the founders. Men with large families could send 
some of their members to the factory while the others 
worked on the farm ; men of small families could sell their 
produce to those who had none. 

The men who came to live in the South Jersey colonies 
hailed from many parts of European Russia. Poland and 
Great Russia were well represented, but the greatest num- 
ber came from South Russia — such as Bessarabia, Podolia, 
Volhynia, Kiev. Their antecedents were as different as 
their birth-places. There were among them men who had 
farmed to some extent in Russia. There were those who 
had lived in villages and traded there and had become fa- 
miliar with farming life. There were skilled laborers and 
small shop-keepers. Among the 3'ounger men there were 
also a few who had enjoyed some educational advantages 
and were carried to the settlements by their enthusiasm, 
the desire to help the return of the Jew to agricultural life. 
This heterogeneous mass, coming as it did from many 
places, and from different stations in life, was made homo- 
geneous by a common purpose. The early days of the col- 
onies, with their communal life, were marked with a feeling 
of solidarity. Even the most ignorant settler was not a 
stranger to the sentiment of a common purpose. In every 
colony early provision was made for public buildings, and 
the synagogue and the public school rose side by side. Not- 
withstanding the similar conditions of settlement, the three 
older colonies soon came to have very distinctive peculiari- 
ties. Alliance from the first devoted more time to agricul- 
ture; the appearance of its people, their mode of living, 
showed the farmer; while in Carmel and Rosenhayn the 



380 BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

greater predominance of the tailoring trades showed itself 
in the physique and to some extent in the radical views 
that one finds among the factory employees in the East Side 
of New York. 

The life in the South Jersey colonies has produced a 
visible effect on their inhabitants. It has influenced the 
thought and action of the older people, it has molded the 
character and the ways of the young. It offers to both 
advantages which would not be at their disposal in a large 
city. Of the settlers in Woodbine seventy-five per cent, 
own their homes, as do one-half of those in Kosenhayn. 
The factory life for those who are obliged to work in the 
factory is not as injurious to health as in the large cities, 
for the ventilation is better, the space allotted to each is 
greater, the light and sunshine have more easy access. 
The relations between employer and employee are more 
personal, the individual is a more important part of the 
population and his direct participation in communal affairs 
reacts favorably on him. If there are no rich men in the 
colonies, there are also no poor — poor as measured by the 
standards of the New York Ghetto. The neighbors know 
one another and are always willing to help those who are 
less fortunate than themselves. But above all there are 
the great advantages to the young. The young lungs ex- 
pand freely in the bracing air; the young eyes roam 
freely over the wide expanse of field and forest ; the young 
legs run as they will. With the free skies above them, with 
a healthy home atmosphere surrounding them, with the 
duties of citizenship instilled into them, and the love for 
their country growing with them as they grow, they are 
laying the foundations for normal and useful membership 
in society. Should the time come when they shall long for 
a wider sphere of activity than their native village affords, 
they can go forth equipped in strength and vitality. 

With all these advantages there are conditions which 
place the colonists at a great disadvantage. Those of their 
number who work in the factory have a very limited field 
of employment. When the house becomes too small for 
the farmer he must get along as best he can; when the 
factory in which his children are employed is idle he is 
often obliged to run into debt. When his children grow up 
and find no congenial occupation in the small village they 
leave him to go to the city to live among strangers and to 
be exposed to its many temptations. When the crops fail 



EASTERN STATES 381 

he often finds himself obliged to sell his horse or his cow, 
and must at times walk miles in order to reach the nearest 
store or the post-office. He has not as many creature com- 
forts as his city cousin, nor has he his discomforts. 

Local differences occur in the soils of Alliance, Carmel, 
Rosenhayn, and Woodbine, but on the whole, they belong 
to the same type of soils with a common geological history. 
The prevailing type is a sandy soil to sandy loam with a 
clayey to gravelly sub-soil. The underdrainage is excel- 
lent and the upper soil, being light and porous, is seldom 
in danger of becoming waterlogged. Thanks to the splen- 
did underdrainage and openness, the soil is mellow and 
warm and admirably adapted for the raising of early truck 
and berries. On the other hand, it is more liable to suffer 
and actually does suffer in dry seasons for lack of moisture, 
because of its slight waterholding power. Such is not the 
case with the heavier soils of North Jersey. Owing to its 
lightness and shifting character, the surface soil is apt to be 
blown away by the strong winds in winter and spring. 
For this reason it is best not to plow the land in the fall 
and to keep it covered with some crop during the winter. 

The crops raised in the colonies for the local and more 
distant markets are berries and grapes, tomatoes, sweet 
potatoes, and fruit. These are the more important crops, 
and many other crops are raised to a slighter extent. The 
South Jersey peaches are famed for their delicious flavor; 
Vineland peaches always find ready buyers, and the Wood- 
bine peaches are fully as good. Then there are sweet pota- 
toes, which have not their equal outside of New Jersey, 
and they command a correspondingly higher price in the 
market. The farmers in the colonies raise large quantities 
of berries, notably strawberries. Part of these are made 
into wine and have a limited but appreciative circle of 
patrons. Grape wine is produced in large quantity, par- 
ticularly in Alliance. Many gallons are sold in New York 
and Philadelphia, the greater part to supply the Passover 
trade. It is claimed by competent judges that some of the 
port wine from the South Jersey colonies is superior to that 
from California. 

In the spring of 1900 a canning factory was established 
in Alliance. Its short career has already demonstrated its 
great usefulness and the results that may be expected. 
There have been canned strawberries, blackberries, cherries, 
pears, apples, peaches, plums, beans, peas, beets, tomatoes, 



882 BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

sweet potatoes, and in smaller quantity, grapes, corn, cit- 
rons, hnckleberries, cranberries, and gooseberries. The Al- 
livine Company, which owns the canning factory, is also 
trying to give object lessons on its own farm, and has estab- 
lished lecture courses on agricultural topics. The Jewish 
farmers thus find a local market for their produce, are ren- 
dered independent of the commission merchant in the city, 
who is at times unscrupulous, and are, moreover, instructed 
in the proper methods of farming. 

Dairying has been receiving considerable attention. The 
milk produced is sold in the local markets at satisfactory 
prices. Bridgeton, Vineland, and Millville are convenient 
markets for the three older colonies, while the milk pro- 
duced in Woodbine is sold in the village of Woodbine itself, 
and to a slight extent at the seashore resorts. The dairy 
of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School, conducted 
according to the most modern methods, and producing milk 
of the finest quality, tried to run a milk wagon to Ocean 
City. The milk was in large demand, but the distance vras 
too great and injurious to the horses, and it was therefore 
decided to dispose of the milk in Woodbine itself. There 
is no doubt, however, that the several dairymen in Wood- 
bine could combine to establish a milk depot in Ocean City, 
shipping their milk by rail. 

There are, probably, about 4,000 acres under cultivation 
in the colonies. In the three older settlements there are 
about 1,100 acres under field crops, 600 acres under truck, 
550 acres under berries, and 250 acres under grapes. Of 
the three. Alliance is by far the most prosperous, and agri- 
culturally the most important. Thus, the value of the 
Rosenhayn farms, with a total acreage of 1,800, is only 
about $60,000, whereas that of the Alliance farms, with a 
total acreage of some 1,700, is about $135,000; and the 
value of the products sold from the Alliance farms was 
greater than that of the others put together. 

The colonies have not had a continuous growth. Periods 
of comparative prosperity alternated with periods of de- 
pression, depending largely upon the condition of the fac- 
tories. Woodbine, like the rest, had its periods of depres- 
sion; nevertheless, its growth has been more steady, and 
to-day it has a population of about 2,500 persons, while 
Alliance, Carmel, and Rosenhayn (including Carton Road), 
taken together, have a population of somewhat about 1,000, 



EASTERN STATES 383 

and this, notwithstanding that they were founded nine 
years before Woodbine. 

The original 25 families that came to Alliance in 1882 
were joined by others until there were in all 67 families 
in the place. As the hardships increased, many became 
discouraged and by 1884 only 50 families remained. At 
this critical time aid was extended to the colonists, and 
the condition of the colony improved perceptibly. The 
crop returns gave additional encouragement leading to the 
increase of the cultivated area. In 1889 the total popula- 
tion was 529, and it has remained about the same. In 
1889 the farmers owned 1,400 acres of land, of which 889 
were under cultivation; in 1901 they owned 1,702 acres, 
of which 1,379 were under cultivation. These few figures 
indicate clearly enough that those of the Alliance settlers 
who remained on their farms gradually added to their 
holdings, and have extended their agricultural holdings. 

In Carmel there were 16 families that came out in 1882 ; 
seven of these left in discouragement; others came to take 
their places, and the population changed from time to time 
until in 1889 there were 286 persons in the place. To the 
original tract of 848 acres 1,500 were added in 1889, and 
36 new houses were erected. There are now about 600 
persons. In 1889 there were 124 acres cleared; now more 
than 700. 

In Rosenhayn there were 6 families in 1883. In 1889 
there were 67 families, containing 294 persons. They 
owned 1,912 acres, of which 261 were under cultivation. 
The number of persons has not increased much. In 1901 
they owned 1,862 acres, of which 662 were cleared. 

In the late summer of 1891 a few men stepped from the 
train on the old wooden platform of the Woodbine station, 
located on the West Jersey Railroad. These were the van- 
guard of the settlers. There was not much to greet them. 
Three old dwellings stood along the Dennisville road, quite 
near the station ; beyond and around them were the darken- 
ing woods. Save for the broad avenue along which their 
train was even then speeding towards the end of the Cape 
there was scarcely a dozen square rods free from the un- 
tamed oak and pine. As one looks from the new station plat- 
form over the hundreds of cottages, at the row of busy fac- 
tories, and the straight streets with their poplars and ma- 
ples, he would not recognize the wilderness of thirteen years 
ago. This is the industrial Woodbine, forming the nucleus 



384 . TiUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

around which are clustered about 50 farms. The growth 
of the village has depended entirely on the growth of its 
industries, and the activity of the farmers has been regu- 
lated by the local market. Of the public buildings in 
Woodbine there are the Woodbine Central School building, 
which is used for municipal, educational and social pur- 
poses, and the synagogue. Near by is the Talmud Torah 
(Hebrew school). A Baptist church has been converted 
into a synagogue. Woodbine has the distinction of having 
established the first kindergarten in the county. Of the 
250 houses in the village, nearly all are owned by the inhab- 
itants. Twenty miles of streets have been laid out and 
partly graded; 12 miles of farm roads have been built, an 
electric light plant and pumping station have been estab- 
lished, a volunteer fire brigade has been organized. There 
are a large hotel in the village, three public schools besides 
the central school, a public bath house, a meeting hall, and 
two parks reserved from the forest area. The 50 families 
that came in 1891 increased in number by the influx of new 
arrivals until now there are about 2,500. Five building and 
loan associations have invested thousands of dollars in 
Woodbine real estate, thus proving their confidence in its 
stability and prosperitj^ 

Throughout the colonies the mercantile pursuits that have 
arisen are rather insignificant. Grocery stores and meat 
markets have been started. Shoe stores, clothing stores, 
bakeries, and the like have been established to supply local 
needs. As a possible exception it may be admitted that 
some stores in Woodbine sometimes serve to supply the 
needs of neighboring villages. Moreover, the brick yard in 
Woodbine sells bricks outside of the village, and consider- 
able quantities of cord wood are sold from Woodbine to the 
Millville, Vineland and other glass factories. 

Recent statistics show that there are a considerable mnn- 
ber of factories in the colonies. Alliance has a cloak factory 
and a canning factory; Kosenha>ai has a clothing factory 
and a brick yard, and manufactures to some extent tin- 
ware and hoisery. Carmel has a clothing factory, and two 
others where ladies ' waists and wrappers are manufactured. 
Woodbine has a clothing factory, a machine and tool plant, 
a hat factory, a shirt factorj^, a small cigar factory, a Imit- 
goods factory, an establishment for making driven well 
points, and a brick yard. 

As compared to the dormant existence of the small vil- 



EASTERN STATES 385 

lages in South Jersey, the Jewish colonies are wide awake 
and progressive. There is a greater range of social ques- 
tions discussed there. There is the consciousness of common 
aims. Political clubs, social clubs, literary societies, mili- 
tary organizations, benevolent organizations have been es- 
tablished, and many are contributing to a better and broader 
Jife. Though most of the voters have been naturalized in 
recent years they display an intelligent interest in national 
as well as in local politics. It may sound strange, yet it is 
true, that, unlike their neighbors, they consider national 
and international affairs above the local affairs. This seems 
to be characteristic of the Jew. He watches with deep con- 
cern the happenings in various countries, as if he felt him- 
self a citizen of the whole world. World politics, the events 
which concern all men, are to him of paramount interest. 
It may be that his long wanderings have taught him to as- 
sume this mental attitude. It may be that this habit of 
thought is inherent in him, yet the visitor to AVoodbine, for 
instance, can convince himself of the truth of the above ob- 
servation. On a Saturday afternoon he will find the older 
people of the village gathered in the post-office or in the rail- 
road station warmly discussing the happenings in Germany, 
France, or Russia. The sewing machine, the plow, or the 
lathe are forgotten for the moment. Dressed in his Sabbath 
clothes and wrapped in the Sabbath mood, he looks into the 
outside world and judges it according to his light. The 
Jewish newspaper informs him in Yiddish of the doings 
outside his own narrow sphere of activity and with this in- 
formation as a basis he indulges in endless discussion. 

It is otherwise with his children. Growing up as they do 
under freer skies, they imbibe something of the new spirit. 
The old traditions are not as infallible to them as to their 
fathers and their thoughts Avander in other directions. For 
them the English newspaper replaces the Yiddish, the school 
history is a greater authority than oral tradition. And yet 
they are not altogether unmindful of this tradition. They 
stand between the old and the new. They are in a transition 
stage, and they partake of what their fathers are, and also 
of what their own children will be. They are Americans, 
with a touch of the foreign spirit still clinging to them, but 
somehow they do not seem to be the worse for it. Their 
home life is healthy, there is no viciousness, and little dis- 
obedience to established authority. They are fond of danc- 
ing, of private theatricals, and of social gatherings in gen- 



386 , BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

eral. The factory atmosphere is often reflected in their 
mode of thought. It is no rare occurrence to see boys 
of fifteen or sixteen discussing in all seriousness some ques- 
tion in sociology, or political economy, of which they biow 
little or nothing. 

Most of the factories are closed "on Saturday. The elders 
solemnly repair to the synagogue and as solemnly return 
when the services are over. The village is in a Sabbath 
spirit, peaceful yet joyous. When evening comes there is 
usually some entertainment. 

Theft and drunkenness are practically unknown in the 
colonies, although wine and beer are consumed in consider- 
able quantities. But there are features which are less fortu- 
nate and not at all commendable. One comes across ig- 
norance and narrowness, stubbornness of spirit and unclean- 
liness of person. Yet even these are not as frequent as they 
used to be. But there is one feature that deserves mention 
— this is the neighborly spirit, and the true charity that the 
colonists display. Quietly, unostentatiously, they help one 
another, often sharing the last crust of bread. When the 
severe winter days come, men often walk a long distance to 
cut some fire wood for a sick neighbor; women frequently 
walk for miles through the snow in order to bring food or 
money to a needy individual. The women in Woodbine 
have organized a Woman's Aid Society and the good work 
it is doing deserves commendation. Those who are inclined 
to accuse the Russian Jew of unwillingness to work, and of 
dependence upon charity, will find upon visiting the South 
Jersey colonies, only peaceful and industrious people always 
ready to work. There are no loafers, no tramps, no 
gamblers. 

The colonists spend a considerable portion of their income 
on public buildings. They have their lodges, circulating 
libraries, evening schools, lecture courses and the like, and 
this healthy social and home life speaks well for the individ- 
uals and the community. 

The many vicissitudes through which the colonists have 
passed have left their mark. Some of the earlier settlers 
have returned to the city population, and in their leisure 
moments recount perhaps the hardships which confronted 
them. It is for them to decide whether they acted wisely. 
But those who stayed have continued to do their work. 
They have not attained great wealth, nor great fame, but 
they have lived and honestly earned their bread. 



EASTERN STATES 387 

Let those who liave so generously worked to found the 
colonies remember that the mere withdrawing of people 
from the tenement districts in the great cities and their 
settling in the country is in itself a worthy work, and if 
there should be ten per cent., or even one per cent, of these 
settlers who entirely depend on farming, the work remains 
worthy. Let the colonies have more factories. The farmers 
v/ill take care of themselves, and the greater the local de- 
mand for their produce, the greater will be the area under 
cultivation. If the liberal policy of inducing reliable man- 
ufacturers to establish themselves in Woodbine is continued 
by the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund there is little 
doubt that the next ten years will see considerable growth. 

The experience of years brought out quite clearly the fact 
that it is practically impossible in many instances to con- 
vert a small trader into a farmer. The ancestral conditions 
and the habits of a lifetime cannot be changed at a mo- 
ment's notice. Earnest as is the purpose of the would-be 
farmer, and great as is his determination, he very often 
finds himself obliged to admit that the opportunity has come 
to him too late in life. The occupation of a lifetime has 
unfitted him for farming. With this experience in mind the 
founders of the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School at 
Woodbine have formulated a plan for the education of the 
children of immigrant Jews. In the few years of its ex- 
istence the school has given ample proof of its usefulness. 
It aims to give its pupils a practical, agricultural education, 
in order that the graduates may ( after an apprenticeship of 
some years with practical farmers) be competent to manage 
farms of their own. The school has now about 120 pupils, of 
whom about ten per cent, are girls. Theoretical instruc- 
tion in the class-room is given together with practical work 
on the school farms, in the dairy, blacksmith shop, poultry 
houses, green houses, etc. 

Independently of the Woodbine school, an agricultural 
school has been established at Doylestown, Pa. The curri- 
culum is somewhat different from that of the Woodbine 
school, but its aim, as in the other case, is primarily the in- 
struction of the children of immigrants in the arts of hus- 
bandry. 

The work of these two institutions is watched with deep 
interest. The visitor to the schools, as he sees the boys work- 
ing in the fields, or as he watches them in their moments of 
recreation, rushing a foot ball against the opposing line, or 



388 RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

running on a base ball field, can not but feel glad and hope- 
ful. He remembers the stooping, narrow-chested men in the 
crowded thoroughfares, he remembers the long centuries of 
artificial Ghetto life, and he rejoices for those who shall 
grow broad of shoulder and brawny of arm, who shall have 
laughter in their eyes, who shall contribute as great a share 
to the physical work of the world as has been contributed 
by their race to the mental and the spiritual life. 

THE NEW ENGLAND FARMS 

Individual Jewish farmers are scattered through the New 
England states, and own farms in Rhode Island, Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. 
By far the greater number are located in Connecticut, and 
they form the most important section of the Jewish farming 
community in New England. The first settlement dates 
back to 1891, when a Jewish family, having saved some 
money by work in a New England mill, purchased a farm 
near New London, Connecticut. The gregarious instincts 
of the race, and particularly the desire for adequate reli- 
gious life, led this family to exert itself in inducing friends 
and relatives to establish themselves in the neighborhood. 
In 1892 a creamery was erected by the Baron de Hirsch 
Fund, and new settlers established themselves in the vicinity 
of New London, Oakdale, Palmerton, Chesterfield, and 
Salem. In 1893 a number of Russian Jews employed in the 
woolen mills, then in operation in Colchester, invested their 
savings in the purchase of farms in the neighborhood. Hav- 
ing had experience with dairy farming in Russia, they found 
it more profitable to devote themselves to dairy farming on 
their new lands. Most of these settled in New London 
County and also in the neighboring counties of Middlesex 
and Hartford. Some farmers also located about eight miles 
from Bridgeport and New Haven. These two cities are ex- 
cellent markets for dairy products, and but for the great 
cost of land near the cities the settlers would have estab- 
lished themselves nearer to the market towns. 

The position of the Jewish farmers in New England is 
quite different from that of the colonists in South Jersey. 
The character of their land, their methods of farming, the 
market conditions are all different. Yet the greatest dis- 
tinction is due to their comparative isolation from their co- 
religionists. They do not have distinct Jewish agricultural 



EASTERN STATES 389 

colonies like those in New Jersey ; they bought farms where 
they could get them, and are therefore surrounded in most 
cases by Yankee neighbors. These played a momentous part 
in molding the farming life of the Jewish settlers. The 
latter had many difficulties to contend with. Beginning 
with limited means and a limited knowledge of their en- 
vironment they were placed at a still greater disadvantage 
by the exhausted condition of their land; because of their 
comparatively small means they found themselves obliged to 
purchase some of the so-called ' * abandoned farms. ' ' These 
are farms which had been treated carelessly and unscien- 
tifically for generations until their productivity was so 
reduced as to render them unprofitable for further cultiva- 
tion. In many cases their owners found themselves com- 
pelled to sell them for a much smaller price than the cost 
of the buildings alone. It is evident that the improvement 
and the profitable cultivation of such exhausted land re- 
quires the unceasing work and care of years. The fact that 
90 per cent, of the Jewish farmers remain on their lands 
speaks much in their favor. Notwithstanding their limited 
capital, their insufficient knowledge, and the poverty of the 
land, they gradually accustomed themselves to their new 
surroundings, adapted themselves to the ways of their 
Yankee neighbors, and are now successfully pursuing their 
new vocation. The friendship and advice of these neigh- 
bors help them at critical moments, and it was the children 
who in many instances threw the parents together, for the 
Jewish children soon learned to know their schoolmates and 
formed friendships which grew until they included the 
parents. 

Dairy farming is the occupation of most of the New Eng- 
land settlers. It is peculiarly adapted to their land and has 
been productive of greater profit than market gardening or 
fruit growing. In dairy farming but little of the fertility 
of the soil is sold off the farm. The comparatively large 
number of cattle and the feeding material purchased make 
possible a more thorough manuring of the land than would 
be practicable with the same expenditure in any other kind 
of farming. As a result of this the New England farms are 
being improved gradually, and are growing more productive 
from year to year. Moreover dairy products find in New 
England a ready sale at good prices, and thus yield to the 
farmer almost immediate cash returns. The Jewish farm- 
ers utilize the large markets of Hartford, New London, and 



390 . RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

Norwich^for cream and butter. Large quantities of milk 
are sold at the creameries in Colchester and Chesterfield. 
The former is a very important milk centre and is situated 
at the end of a short branch of the air line division of the 
New York, New Haven and Hartford Road, and is about 
three miles from Turnerville, on the main line. Colchester 
has a separating plant which offers very good prices for 
milk. From 3 to 3% cents per quart are paid there, and in 
the large market it is sold according to the market quota- 
tions. 

The Jewish farmers realize the value of modern meth- 
ods. They are careful, in many instances, to select the very 
best cows that they can get. They have built a number of 
silos for the preservation of corn. They follow the instruc- 
tions of their experiment station officers in regard to the 
compounding of rations for their cattle. On many farms 
the equipment is still incomplete, but the officers of the 
Jewish Agricultural and Aid Society have taken an active 
interest in the affairs of the Jewish farmers and are not 
backward in extending aid and encouragement where they 
are needed most. 

Like the colonists in South Jersey, the Jewish farmers in 
New England had various occupations in Europe. Most of 
them, however, were either artisans or petty traders. Men 
with large families were more certain of success, for at the 
beginning at least they were obliged to look for a part of 
their income to the mill or factory. The enthusiasm that 
marked the early days of the South Jersey colonies was not 
lacking here. The farmers went to work and bore their 
hardships bravely. They seemed to have imbibed something 
of the spirit of their Yankee neighbors, for they show much 
self-reliance and independence of character. In their reli- 
gious life they are as a rule orthodox and provide for the 
instruction of their children in Hebrew and Jewish history. 
There is also a measure of social life, particularly during 
the holidays. Their relations with one another are friendly, 
and they represent on the whole an intelligent portion of 
the Russian immigrants. 

Most of the farms were purchased by the settlers at two- 
tliirds the original costs of the buildings. The purchase 
price varied from $1,200 to $1,500 with an immediate cash 
payment of one-third to one-half the purchase price. The 
houses are in most cases frame buildings, and the farms are 
supplied with the necessary outbuildings. The land is roll- 



EASTERN STATES 391 

ing or \\i\\j, and the soil is gravelly or loamy. Although 
the most important branch of agriculture that is followed is 
dairy farming, they also engage in truck farming, grain 
growing, poultry keeping, and fruit growing. A beginning 
has been made in the construction and management of green 
houses. A number of farmers have purchased incubators, 
and are raising chickens for the market. Like their Yankee 
neighbors, they derive an important part of their income 
from summer boarders. Many Jewish people from New 
York and Boston prefer to board with Jewish farmers in 
New England, because of the kosher board that can be se- 
cured. This " agricultural industry," if it may be called 
such, offers the additional advantage to the farmers that 
they have a home market for the products of their farms. 
The canning of tomatoes has also been started at Colchester, 
and gives promise of greater development. The Jewish 
farmers of New England utilize their grapes for wine mak- 
ing and in some cases earn a little money in lumbering and 
the cutting of railroad ties. The children of a number of 
the farmers work in the small mills near Oakdale, Norwich, 
and Palmerton, and thus contribute something to the re- 
sources of their families. Yet the New England farmers de- 
pend upon the factories but to a limited extent, and these 
do not play the important part in their life that they do in 
the life of the South Jersey colonists. 

There are probably about 400 Jewish farmers in the New 
England states. The farms average about 100 acres each, 
and the total acreage is therefore about 40,000. On the 
average there are probably ten head of cattle on each farm, 
and enough horses to do the farm work. The Jewish farm- 
ers are gradually paying off their obligations and improv- 
ing their holdings. Their future in New England has much 
promise. 



(B) WESTERN STATES 

In describing the condition of the Jewish farmers located 
in the north-western states of the Union as observed by the 
writer, who, accompanied by Mr. William Kahn, of the Jew- 
ish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, of New York, 
visited the homes of a large number of these people during 
the summer of 1903, more than a mere narrative to gratify 
the curious is intended. How the Jew lives and works as an 
agriculturalist in America must be of the deepest interest to 
every well-meaning and earnest Jew and Jewess. For, how- 
ever favorable the '' chances " city life offers to the poor 
Jewish immigrant from Russia and Roumania to rise from 
a peddler to an importer or from a sweat-shop operator to 
a manufacturer, it is the farm that holds the true key to a 
difficult situation. Less than a decade or two ago it seems 
to have been a conviction with even the best of our people 
that the city offers larger opportunities for the immigrant 
Jew. Here, it was held, he can lift himself into prominence 
by means of the industries. The educational institutions, 
too, it was held, will develop the talents of his children ; his 
son may become a lawyer, physician, or a professor; his 
daughter may attend the university and become learned in 
the classics, or she may become an artist, a vocalist, or a 
pianist. These '' chances " are good in the city, while on 
the farm the Jew will drop out from the world's noticing 
eye and become, at best, a producer of the plain Irish potato 
and the artless yellow pumpkin. Such argument seems to 
have been convincing to many not very long ago. But there 
is ''not the ill wind which blows no man good." The 
heavier Jewish immigration to the United States caused a 
wiser attitude. The newer condition as it developed among 
the Jews living in the congested quarters in the larger cities 
has taken off the sharp edge of the ' ' chance-in-the-city ' ' ar- 
gument and the advisability of having the Jewish poor ap- 
ply themselves to agriculture is no longer questioned by any 
thinking Jew. 

But while the advisability of bringing the Jew to farm- 

392 



WESTERN STATES 393 

ing is generally acceded, the feasibility of such a movement 
is still an open question with many. Can and will the Jew 
make a successful farmer is a question of more than passing 
concern to those who, much as they would assist in the move- 
ment, cannot bring themselves to believe that the Jew is 
capable of making farming a successful calling. It is, 
therefore, for the purpose of forcing home the conviction 
of the Jew's willingness and ability to till the soil that the 
following facts and figures concerning the Jewish farmers 
are given publicity. What is told of conditions is the state- 
ment of an eye-witness, what is drawn and concluded by in- 
ference is based on years of experience in the work of assist- 
ing Jewish poor to make farming their calling, and what is 
given as impressions is the result of careful study and close 
observation among these farmers in their own homes and 
surroundings. 

Before relating, however, what was seen and learned on 
these visits to the various farmers in Dakota, Wisconsin, 
Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, it is deemed proper — and 
it will surely prove news to many — to state that, most con- 
servatively estimated, there are more than one thousand 
Jewish farmers located in the territory west of the Alle- 
ghenys and east of the Rocky Mountains. With nearly 
three hundred of these Jewish farmers the Jewish Agricul- 
turists' Aid Society of America (whose office is in Chi- 
cago) is more or less in constant touch. These farmers are 
engaged exclusively in agriculture; no other industry is 
followed by them save what comes within the sphere of their 
calling. They are actively engaged in all forms of the 
work ; from gardening and dairy farming near the cities in 
Illinois to wheat farming and cattle raising in the Dakotas ; 
from truck farming in Florida to diversified farming in In- 
diana and Wisconsin; from fruit farming in Michigan to 
cotton raising in Oklahoma. They were all, at the outset, 
unfamiliar with the work of farming as it is carried on in 
this country, but, thanks to their untiring energy, they have 
succeeded — some most admirably, others quite satisfac- 
torily — in their undertaking. There can be little doubt as 
to the ultimate success of these willing workers, among 
whom, more than anything else, is manifest a spirit of great 
contentment and a true delight in their new calling. 

After a forty hours' trip from Chicago by way of St. 
Paul and Bismarck to Wilton, North Dakota, we left the 
railroad and started on a tour through the countiy. Going 



394 RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

eighteen miles northwest of Wilton we came to the farm of 
L, C. This farmer is one of the latest arrivals in North 
Dakota, he having come out from New York with his wife 
and eight children at the end of last year. He is located, 
like all our farmers in Dakota, on a homestead of 160 acres, 
and though this is his first summer on a farm he has made 
considerable improvement on the place. He has broken 35 
acres of land, 32 of which he has put in flax and the balance 
in corn, potatoes and garden stuff. He has the assistance 
of a son, eighteen years of age, and a younger daughter, 
who, like Whittier 's ' ' Maud MuUer ' ' does not shun raking 
the hay on a hot summer day. On our arrival at the farm 
we found these two young people in the field " haying "; 
the son on the mower, and the girl on the hay rack, and they 
were at it with a readiness as if they had been accustomed to 
it from early childhood. The father was busy putting a 
curbing in the well, and was assisted by one of his younger 
children. Another one of his boys was herding the cows. 
The best help, however, this man has is his good wife. Her 
hand is visible in every part of the home. The modest 
dwelling they erected was yet incompleted. It was in a 
condition to afford shelter for the summer but not for win- 
ter. In spite of its incompleteness the house was arranged 
to afford the best comfort to the large family of ten people 
that occupies it. Both husband and wife are appreciative 
of the situation. They know that there is great work before 
them, but they are ready for it, and the satisfaction they 
expressed at having reached even this state in their under- 
taking, their hopefulness for the future, and the cheerful- 
ness with which they and their children are at their work, 
augurs well for their success. They are the people who in- 
deed will succeed. An incident which occurred while we 
were at the house of this family deserves special mention. 
It illustrates the good quality of the people; a quality es- 
sential in the character of those Jews who desire to build up 
their homes and establish themselves as agriculturists. The 
C. family, prior to making their homestead entry, conducted 
a grocery store on the East Side in New York City. Among 
the relies of that time is a photograph showing the whole 
family arrayed in all the pomp and finery becoming the 
position of an East Side grocery merchant. On that photo- 
graph the father appears with a heavy watch chain, the 
mother with her earrings and finger rings, while the chil- 
dren are bedecked with laces and ribbons in great profusion. 



WESTERN STATES 395 

Noticing this family picture we ventured to remark on the 
fine appearance of the family, and suggested that here on 
the farm such finery will hardly be appreciated, as there 
are so few people to notice it. In answer to our remark the 
woman said : ' ' We are glad we shall not need it. There in 
New York we worked for the dress and nothing more, here 
we dress to work and v/ork for a home.'' 

About four miles from this farm are located the home- 
steads of T. and I. K., father and son. They entered on 
their homesteads a few months before our visit. They also 
came from New York, where the other members of 
the family — mother and children — were left. Hav- 
ing come to their farms at the early spring, they 
had to go to land-breaking and hence could not build 
their home so as to enable them to bring the family 
to the farm. On our arrival at their '* shack," we found 
them preparing for haying. They had built a stable, dug a 
well and cellar, and the material for their dwelling was 
on the place ready to be put up as soon as time would per- 
mit them to do so. In the field they had done good work. 
They had broken 40 acres of land, seeded it in flax, which 
was in an excellent state. The '^ breaking " which was 
done by the son, an ex-cloak maker, showed that it did not 
take the young man much time to learn how to guide the 
plow. The acreage worked indicated that the work, so well 
done, was accomplished in a reasonably quick time. Speak- 
ing with this family of the change they had made and of the 
many hardships they had already endured, and which they 
will still have to endure before they will be able to have 
their family comfortably housed on the farm, they ex- 
pressed their absolute confidence in the future, asserted that 
they w^ill shun no v/ork and mind no difficulty in carrjdng 
out their intention of making the homesteads in reality what 
they were now but in name. 

From here we drove eight miles, south by east, passing 
the homesteads of J. M. and M. Z., whom we expected to 
meet at the farm of M. brothers, the place of our destina- 
tion. The M. brothers' farm, with its large dwelling house, 
stables and outhouses, its live stock of nine horses, five cows, 
and as many calves, makes an attractive showing. The 
dwelling house is situated on a somewhat elevated place and 
is visible from quite a distance. As we drew near we 
noticed the cattle in the pasture, the light green fields of 
young grain and the darker green of the young flax stretch- 



396 BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

ing before us in large patches, the whole forming a picture 
indicating life, human energy, and intelligent activity. 

The brothers M. are Roumanians who came to this coun- 
try within the last few years. One of them came to 
America during the early part of 1899, and the other two 
followed him a year later. To a limited extent they fol- 
lowed agriculture in their native home, but, here in America 
they, like most of the newcomers from Eussia, Roumania 
and Galicia, went to the city — Chicago, in this instance — 
where they found the usual employment in the sweat-shop 
and in the picture frame factory. Accustomed to rural life 
and to work in the open air they could not well bear the 
change the new condition imposed upon them. Especially 
did the wife of the oldest brother suffer by this change. 
She could not endure the life in the congested quarters in 
the city and fell sick. Learning of the work of the Jewish 
Agriculturists' Aid Society of America, these people, to- 
gether with Max Z., a brother of the wife of one of the M.'s 
and a young man of exceptionally fine physique, made ap- 
plication for a loan to enable them to take up the work of 
farming. Their application received favorable considera- 
tion at the hands of the directors of the society and loans 
aggregating the sum of $2,000 were granted to them. They 
located on homesteads in Burleigh County, North Dakota, 
and though this was their first season on their homesteads 
they were already well established. They have over eighty 
acres under cultivation on their various homesteads. Most 
of the acreage is seeded in flax with every prospect of a 
good yield. On one of the homesteads they built a com- 
modious six-room house, on the other a large barn, and with 
the smaller buildings on the other homesteads, cellar, stable 
and sheds, their improvements in this respect represent a 
value of twelve hundred dollars or more. Their live stock 
is worth more than one thousand dollars, and with wagons, 
harness, buggy and other implements they offer ample se- 
curity for the money loaned to them. More than this 
security, however, must be counted their eagerness and 
ability to improve their estates. 

Our next stopping place was at the farm of V. B. We 
arrived here after dark and were cordially greeted by Mr. 
and Mrs. B., who expressed their delight at the opportunity 
of having us stay at their home over night. Entering the 
house we found that our hosts had already some company. 
Two boys, sons of one of the Jewish farmers in the neigh- 



WESTERN STATES 397 

borhood, were here. Their father had purchased a cow and 
a calf from a farmer a few miles away, and the boys were 
on their way home with the purchase. They had yet about 
six miles to their home, and turned in here for the night, ex- 
pecting to start again on their journey with the break of 
day. Expressing our doubt as to the ability of our hosts to 
shelter so many guests in their home, we were assured that 
there was plenty of room for all. It was, indeed, pleasing 
to note with what cheerfulness the hospitality was extend- 
ed ; a cheerfulness which partook of a sense of thankfulness 
to Divine Providence for having granted the blessings that 
made possible the hospitality. 

For the first three years on their homesteads the oc- 
cupants lived in a sod-house erected by their own hands, 
which afforded them a mere shelter. They did bide their 
time, and in 1902 were able to build for themselves a modest 
but comfortable home. They look with just pride on the 
work they have accomplished. They have one of the finest 
quarter-sections in the township. Sixty-five acres of this 
they have under cultivation. They have eight milch-cows, 
three heifers and calves, five horses and a colt, besides all 
the machinery and implements. They are indebted, all 
told, to the amount of a little over $1,000, but their estate 
is worth to-day three times that amount, and the money they 
owe is well secured. Five years ago these people arrived 
here in Chicago from Russia. The man went to work in a 
sweat-shop, earning from six to seven dollars a week. He 
soon learned that the conditions in the city were not prom- 
ising for him, and he applied for a loan in order to take up 
a homestead of free government land. At first a loan of 
$600 was granted to him, and with that — not having a dol- 
lar of his own — he started at his venture. The family 
went through considerable hardship, but were not daunted. 

An object lesson of how the Jew will live as a farmer was 
given through a slight incident which happened while we 
were at this farm. It has always been maintained by the 
writer that the Jew, with his high regard for life and his 
indomitable ambition to make life bright and worthy, will, 
when he takes to farming, broaden the view of the agricul- 
turists and do much towards dispelling the odium which 
hangs on to the " hay-seed " by reason of his proverbial 
narrow-mindedness. While at the breakfast table in the 
home of our friend B., the hostess waited on us and talked 
to us of the future plans of the family. Among others she 



398 . RURAL SETTLEMENTS 

stated that, if the crop turned out as expected, she could 
go the coming fall to Bismarck to have a tooth fixed. Dur- 
ing the afternoon we had occasion to visit the home of a 
non-Jev/ish farmer with whom we had some dealings in the 
past. This farmer is an old settler and quite well-to-do. 
As we drove into his yard we pulled up before a low shed 
covered with straw, the house of this farmer. We found 
that our man was not at home. His wife came to the door, 
barefooted, and as she spoke one could not fail to notice the 
exceedingly bad condition of her teeth. This made a de- 
cided impression, and a thought not unfamiliar came for- 
cibly upon us. Here was an old settled farmer whose pos- 
sessions were worth ten times as much as those of his Jewish 
neighbor, housed in a one-room shed, compared with which 
the house of our friend B. is a veritable palace. The Jew- 
ish farmer's wife having one defective tooth is ready to 
have it attended to, while the wife of the other, if not 
w^holly ignorant of the existence of the dentist, seems never 
to have thought of availing herself of the good service of 
that individual. "What a difference in the conception of 
life. Oh, for the day when the Jew will again be a farmer ! 
The Jewish seer's dream of beautiful homes, where every 
man will dwell peacefully and contentedly under his own 
vine and fig-tree, can best be realized through the Jewish 
conception of life and by the Jewish tiller of the soil. In 
more than one way has the Jew brought home to the world 
the lessons of life, teaching the way to sweeten and to 
beautify it. 

From the V. B. farm we went to the house of H. B. 
This man has the distinction of being the first settler in 
his township. He came here from Chicago four years ago, 
and pitched his tent in the open country, several miles away 
from any neighbor. He had the choice of the best lands 
and he selected a fine homestead. He was, however, not 
long without neighbors. Within less than two years the 
homesteads in his township were taken, and to-day there is 
not an acre of free government land left unoccupied in his 
vicinity. We found B. in the field cutting hay. He was on 
the mower looking every inch a farmer. There was nothing 
about him which would denote the uninitiated worker. 
There was a fine span of horses before the machine, har- 
nessed after the most approved farmer 's style. The mower, 
too, though four years old, was in excellent condition — 
the whole outfit equal to any that can be found among the 



WESTERN STATES 399 

Swedish, Norwegian, and German farmers in the vicinity. 
We drove along his farm looking at the crops. He had 
nearly one hundred acres under cultivation, forty of which 
were seeded in wheat and spelt, though with a poor pros- 
pect of any yield. He had, however, nigh fifty acres in 
flax which is in excellent condition. He had also a few 
acres in corn, and oats, besides potatoes, beans, beets, etc. 
His live-stock, consisting of seven horses and twelve head 
of horn cattle, we also found to be in splendid condition, 
and it alone easily represents a value fully covering the 
amount of the indebtedness of this farm. 

In the extreme northern portion of McLean County, in 
township 150, Range 78, are located sixteen Jewish home- 
steaders. The homesteads are all within a radius of about 
twelve miles, the nearest being about eight miles from Bal- 
four. Our first visit was to the homesteads of the R. family. 
This family, consisting of father, two married sons and a 
son-in-law, have entered on four homesteads, two of which 
are located together while the others are about two miles 
apart. Considering the short time they had been on their 
respective homesteads — having filed their entries the winter 
before — the improvements they made bear evidence not only 
of their willingness to work as farmers but, what is more 
important, of their ability to do so. They built a large 
barn which was serving them as shelter until the house un- 
der construction would be ready for them. They also erect- 
ed stables for their cattle, dug wells, constructed cellars and 
made the necessary fences around their yards. They had 
nearly one hundred acres under cultivation, eighty of which 
were seeded in flax, and, they had, at the time of our visit, 
made nearly forty tons of hay. Their live stock consisted 
of eight horses, three cows, two heifers and three calves. 
We stayed for more than a day and had an opportunity to 
observe the farmers at their work. The favorable impres- 
sion which we had of these people was strengthened by 
this observation. 

From here we went about ten miles south where, in 
township 149, we came to the homestead of G. This settler 
had come out from New York with his wife and eight chil- 
dren during the fall of 1902. He was assisted by the Jew- 
ish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society and established 
himself upon a fine tract of fertile land. Though about 
eighteen miles away from the railroad, the homestead has 
been wisely chosen, it being well watered and free from 



400 . BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

stony and'alcoholated patches so often found in the prairies 
of the Dakotas. G. has built for himself a comfortable 
dwelling, a good barn and stable, and has broken over 
forty acres of land since he settled upon his homestead. 
He has four horses, two cows and two calves. He has the 
assistance of his eldest son, seventeen years of age, and 
of a good wife who looks after the comfort of her husband 
and children. About a mile away to the west is located 
a sister of Mr. G., a widow with her three children. In 
this vicinity also are located two young men, who, not 
being able to find any free government land nearer their 
own homes, came out further west and located in McLean 
County. We found them here on their claims engaged in 
hay-making, but who expected by the following year to 
begin the improvements on their homesteads as required 
by the law. In this connection it is also worthy of men- 
tion that six more young men, sons of Jewish farmers of 
Ramsey County, had the previous spring gone as far west 
as Ward County, and located as homesteaders. The action 
of these young men is a telling answer to the often repeated 
question, " Will the sons of our Jewish settlers stay 
farmers ?" We had occasion to speak with these young 
men and from all we could ascertain we are convinced 
that it would require very strong inducements to bring 
them to live in the city. They love the country and their 
chosen vocation, and are on their respective homesteads to 
stay and work as agriculturists. 

Another young man broke fifty-four acres of land dur- 
ing last spring. He also is the son of a farmer located in 
Ramsey County. The boy was about eight years of age 
when he came with his father to the farm. He has grown 
up at the work, and has now filed an entry for a homestead 
of his own in McLean County. He came to his homestead 
equipped with the necessary implements and live stock, 
all of which are in first-class shape and condition, and 
second to none that can be found in charge of any young 
farmer in the state. A third Jewish young boy, who two 
years ago, was working in a factory in Chicago, broke forty 
acres of land during the spring. This is excellent work 
for a novice. Undoubtedly the good example of his young 
friends, their valuable advice, and their encouraging 
words, have contributed no little to the success of this 
novice farmer. Seeing these three young men together, 
one could not help being thoroughly impressed with the 



WESTERN STATES 401 

absurdity of the usual saw that the Jew cannot or will not 
make a farmer. It would be hard indeed to find in any 
farmer community three young men better equipped and 
more willing to do the work and lead the life of the farmer. 

From McLean County we went hy way of Minot do\¥n 
to St. Paul, and from there to Northern Wisconsin where 
we visited some of our older settlers in that vicinity. We 
have here some Jewish farmers who have, so to speak, 
grown up with the country; having purchased wild lands 
about ten years ago when the country was but very spar- 
ingly settled. Unfamiliar with the work they were to per- 
form and unaccustomed to a life of such thorough seclu- 
sion as was necessarily theirs in this new country, they 
endured much trial and privation. However, they have 
suffered and labored till they have learned and succeeded, 
and they are to-day well established in a most fertile coun- 
try, surrounded by kind and pleasant neighbors, with whom 
they stand on an equal footing as self-respecting produc- 
ers. A more contented people than our Jewish farmers in 
Burron County, Wisconsin, will be hard to find anywhere, 
and their contentment is well founded. 

We can not refrain from giving, as concisely as possible, 
the story of one of our families located in this vicinity. 
It will illustrate the possibilities farming holds for even 
the poorest among the poor, and will also demonstrate the 
fact that the means applied in helping the Jewish poor, 
ready and willing to work, to change the condition from 
poverty to affluence need be no waste of money, but an 
interest-bearing investment, ample and v/ell secured. Nine 
years ago the family in question, consisting of husband, 
wife, and six children, the oldest of whom was a boy of 
thirteen years of age, lived in the city in dire poverty. 
The husband worked in a factory, earning eight dollars 
per week when work was plentiful. Through sickness in 
the family he fell back in paying the rent for his house, 
and within less than a year the family was evicted three 
times. With the assistance of the Jewish Agriculturists' 
Aid Society the family removed from the city to the farm. 
Eighty acres of wild land were purchased — title being taken 
in the man's name — and after the most necessary build- 
ings had been erected on the premises, a few implements 
and some live stock obtained, the family was indebted to 
the society to the amount of over $1,000. After the first 
year on the farm our friend was in a position that required 



402 BUBAL SETTLEMENTS 

further aid from the society, and $200 more was invested 
to enable the man to hold out on the farm. After the 
lapse of the second year the family was able to maintain 
itself, but was unable to pay even the few dollars of taxes 
levied against the property. The progress the people made 
during the first years on the farm was slow. The work 
they did was very superficial. No one could handle the 
tools needed on such a farm properly, and it was not until 
after the family had been five years on the farm that the 
society felt justified in purchasing suitable tools and plac- 
ing them at the disposal of the people. All these years 
advances of various sums of money had to be made in order 
to help them. These sums, together with the interest of 
four per cent, on all amounts advanced, brought up the 
indebtedness of this family to nearly $1,500. During this 
time, while the process of turning the Jewish family who, 
like other Jewish families, were not farmers, into a people 
of the soil, not a few insisted that the money was wasted. 
In fact, a gentleman who, four years ago, went out west 
for the purpose of visiting the Jevvdsh farmers and inves- 
tigating their condition, and who also visited the family 
in question, was not slow in asserting that the society is 
** sinking money on that farm." The society, however, 
disregarded these statements and went, as this society 
always does, the full length of its endeavor, and the desired 
end has been attained. The family to-day is not only in a 
position to make the annual payments on its indebtedness, 
but has already an equity of $1,500 in the estate. Fully 
sixty acres of the wild lands have been cleared and the 
property, with the buildings on it, is marketable for $2,500 
at any time. This price has been set upon the farm by 
the bank at Barron, as being so reasonable that a purchaser 
for the property can be had for it at a day's notice. Be- 
sides the equity in the land, the family has six cows, four 
heifers, four steers, three calves, a fine span of horses, a 
farmer wagon, a light spring wagon, all the implements, 
among which there is a mower, a rake and binder, besides 
plows, harrows, etc., and a stump-puller that cost over 
$100. It need hardly be added that the indebtedness of 
the family is now well secured and that the money invested 
has not been '' sunk," but judiciously and advantageously 
applied. It should be stated, however, that while the fam- 
ily having learned the work, is now in a position to pay 
back what has been advanced on its account, it is at the 



WESTERN STATES 403 

same time improving the property and within six or eight 
years, when the full amount of the indebtedness will have 
been paid, will be in possession of an estate of from six to 
eight thousand dollars. But while the repayment of the 
investment has been assured, and a nice little estate created 
for that poor family, the Jewish Agriculturists ' Aid Society 
has worked for an aim by far higher than the one. to which 
can be applied a money standard. The people have been 
raised from a condition of depending, cringing poverty 
to the dignified state of self-reliant manhood. 

Numerous other instances could be given showing the sat- 
isfactory progress made by the proteges of the Jewish Agri- 
culturists^ Aid Society of America. However, the forego- 
ing descriptions fully suffice to point the great lesson which 
American Jewry must, of sheer necessity, learn and take to 
heart. Nor can it be overlooked that the success attained by 
these Jewish farmers is due to their own efforts and to the 
readiness and willingness with which they undertook the 
work. True, they had to be assisted in order to be able to 
take up the work, but it was their own perseverance and 
the undaunted courage with which they bore the hardships 
and privations incidental to the undertaking that assured 
success. To say that the Jew is no farmer is simply stating 
an accepted fact, but to maintain that he will not become a 
successful farmer is a grave error. What the few hundred 
Jews have attained and are attaining by tilling the soil in 
our western states, many thousands of the Jewish poor that 
at present are crowding the settlements in the cities will 
attain if they are given the chance. This fact cannot be 
too strongly emphasized. In the face of existing condi- 
tions, under which it is apparent that the Jewish centre of 
gravity is shifting from the Russian Pale of Settlement to 
America, the fact that the Jew will successfully work as an 
agriculturist is of the upmost importance ; it is the essential 
in the proper adjustment of the social-economic position of 
the Jew in America. Whatever might have been the politi- 
cal, economic, and religious condition of the Jew in the old 
world, here in America his complete emancipation can be 
accomplished. Nothing will aid more effectively in the 
consummation of this end than his employment at agri- 
culture. 



XIII 

co:NrcLUsiONS 



By Chaeles S. Beknheimer 



405 



CONCLUSIONS 

We have now concluded a study bearing on possibly one 
million out of total of one and a half million Jews in the 
United States. 

We have seen in the consideration of the economic con- 
dition of the immigrant Jews in the several cities that they 
stand out pre-eminentl}^ in the clothing trade.^ 

Many of the workers have risen to the position of con- 
tractors, as has been pointed out, but this has often been, 
so to speak, a false rise, being begotten of the desire to be 
an employer, or '' boss," and having as its effect the in- 
crease of these go-betweens of the laborers on the one side, 
and the manufacturers on the other. The latter were thus 
enabled to bring to bear a pressure resulting in a com- 
petition which lowered the profits of the contractors and 
the wages of the laborers. From this there arose constant 
friction, reacting on the manufacturer and inducing a 
tendency on his part to deal with the laborer in a factory 
of his ov/n, thus doing away with the small shop and its 
concomitant evils. On the part of the worker we have a 
constantly increasing recognition of the value of organiza- 
tion, with the consequent appreciation of the importance 
of maintaining standards as to hours, wages, and comforts. 
This maintenance, is, however, made difficult by that very 
mobility to which we have adverted, by constant additions 
of newly arrived immigrants, and by unorganized workers 
from without, such as farmers' families and the like, who 
can successfully compete in lines of industries requiring 
little skill or necessitating little organization in the factory. 

There is a more direct connection of these industries 
with the professions in many individual instances than is 
generally suspected. One year may see a clothing or cloak 
worker in a shop; in a few years there will be a sign at 

^" By 1890 the Jews had virtually gained control of the clothing industry in 
New York, a control that they have succeeded in maintaining to the present 
time." Willett, The Employment of Women in the Clothing Trade, p. 34. 

Sec, also. Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. XV, p. 334. 

406 



CONCLUSIONS 407 

the residence of this same man, '' M. D/' The desire 

to go into the professions is intense. 

Between the shop workers and the professional men there 
are a variety of occupations into which the population has 
entered. Among the younger generation who have had the 
benefit of schooling there is getting to be less and less dis- 
tinction as to the sort of occupation which they enter. 
But there is, as has been shown, too great a tendency to 
enter a few professions and to go into occupations requir- 
ing comparatively little use of the hands. 

With full recognition of the difficulty of overcoming 
this tendency and of the value of giving the best possible 
intellectual training to those who have the necessary apti- 
tude, it seems to me that there ought to be a strong move- 
ment in the direction of manual training and industrial 
education. Manual training will aid in the normal devel- 
opment of the individuals, in a broadening of their powers, 
in a rounding out to counter-balance what has heretofore 
been a one-sided grov/th. Industrial education should be 
emphasized so that the trades and the professions requiring 
mechanical training will be taken up. With ability as 
skilled workers, many young men will have a better oppor- 
tunity than in their attempts to crowd the stores and 
offices. It seems desirable that educational institutions 
intended for the Jewish immigrant population, especially in 
the larger cities, should have as important features, manual 
instruction, and the teaching of mechanical trades and 
professions. 

The movement of the immigrants away from the densely 
populated quarters of the large cities is now receiving 
attention. The Jersey settlements and the New England 
and western farms are all evidences of a rural life. They 
are admittedly small beginnings which in many instances 
have required and still require subsidizing of one kind or 
another, and which, like most small farming operations 
nowadays, are difficult of maintenance alongside the com- 
petition of farming on a large scale. Nevertheless, they 
are helpful in the movement by which the crowding in the 
large cities is sought to be modified. This work is also 
given an impetus by the Industrial Removal Office, as a 
result of which a number of immigrants have been directed 
to smaller places. Such an undertaking, if steadily pur- 
sued, should control to some extent the settlement of immi- 
grants in the larger centres and be the means of drawing 



408 CONCLUSIONS 

others besides those directly sent to the less crowded com- 
munities. 

^Tiatever the enemies of Jews may say against them, 
they recognize an intense intellectual keenness and a desire 
to learn. Some antagonists sometimes turn to this very 
ability as a factor which makes it difficult for the rest of 
the population to compete with them. But such argument 
fares ill with the Yankee, the American, the Anglo-Saxon ; 
he possesses too much of that same alertness and cleverness, 
has proceeded too far in the school of tolerance, is too broad- 
minded and fair minded, to permit such a claim to be made 
against intellectual superiority, however acquired or mani- 
fested. 

On all sides it is admitted that the Jewish immigrant 
population places its children at school. This is a matter 
of the most common observation. It is as true in Great 
Britain^ as in the United States. 

Not only is the appreciation of intellectual work shown 
in formal schooling, it is marked in the sharpness of intel- 
lect beyond the school, as is indicated in the following 
observation, '' I have met keener speculative ardor and 
more force in argument among the young Hebrews of the 
East Side in New York than among the young athletes 
of our universities. ' '^ If Miss Seudder 's words were taken 
literally I can add that the ' ' young Hebrews ' ' would resent 
being compared with the *' young athletes," for some of 
these same " young Hebrews " are students of the univer- 
sities, excelling in scholarship the " young athletes." It 
is, however, true that some of the young men who are 
unschooled in the conventional sense show strong intellec- 
tual traits and subtle dialectic qualities, — sometimes to an 
excessive degree, regarding argument too much as an end 
instead of a means to the attainment of correct thought 
and action. This, of course, does not affect the main con- 
tention, that the Russian Jew, young and old, shows a 
superior intellectual and educational standard. One rea- 
son for the strong intellectual capacity and the high intel- 
lectual ideal of the Jew is attributable to the study of the 
Bible and the Talmud proceeding from generation to gen- 

^ " Jewish children, encouraged in every way at home, often progress with 
astonishing rapidity, and seldom fail to reward the ambition of their parents 
by a substantial advance on their original condition." Mary C. Tabor, in 
Booth, Life and Labor of the People, Vol. Ill, p. 223. 

2 Vida D. Seudder, " A Hidden Weakness in Our Democracy," Atlantic 
Monthly, May, 1902. 



CONCLUSIONS 409 

eration, and to the necessity which has been forced upon 
him to live by his wit.^ 

The older Jew, weak in body, fails in appreciation of the 
physical development which makes the well-rounded nor- 
mal man. The young Jew, by his contact at school, at 
college, in the world at large, is beginning to realize its 
value. With the great interest in sports at our educational 
institutions, he becomes affected by the enthusiasm. This 
is rapidly growing, and it will help to save him from the 
deterioration which might have set in amid the rapid work- 
ings of the life here. Wherever Jews are in institutions, 
or wherever influences can be brought to bear, the oppor- 
tunity for physical education should be utilized. This will 
not only help the merely physical development, but bring 
about more normal growth, away from concentration on 
the purely mental. 

We have seen the social development of the immigrant 
Jew. The Jew of the older generation has his synagogue 
as a centre of social attraction. Connected with this are 
the auxiliary societies of the congregation ; even the burial 
society affords means of social intercourse. As we pro- 
ceed through the layers of society according to the length 
of years in which the inhabitants have been in this coun- 
try, we find that the means of social enjoyment approach 
more and more the methods that prevail among the people 
generally. Thus we have the lodge and the beneficial 
society, the social, the party, and the ball, as well as the 
concert and the theatre. We have noted among the older 
element and that not thoroughly Americanized that the 
Yiddish theatre is an attraction and that it presents some 
admirable features. We have observed, too, unfortunate 
tendencies to Americanize the theatre and the amusements, 
according to New York Bowery standards. 

Among all immigrant populations the misunderstanding 
between the parents and the children is one of the saddest 
consequences of settlement in a strange land. The children 
of necessity become rapidly adapted to the ways of the 
native population, but the parents remain foreigners. This 
is true of the Jewish people. The children are often bread 
winners of the family to a considerable extent and the inter- 
preters for their parents to the outside world, so that they 
acquire an importance which saps parental authority at a 



tn 



1 " The average Jew could always read and write." Abrahams, Jewish Life 
th0 Middle Ages, p. 340. 



410 • CONCLUSIONS 

time when that should be the strongest force to control the 
children and keep them out of the ways that tempt. The 
parents are frequently employed during the day and are 
prevented from looking after their children, even when 
they have the necessary force and power. The home sur- 
roundings are frequently poor, and the children naturally 
seek an outlet elsewhere. This will explain why some Jew- 
ish children of this immigrant population are becoming 
. street children, children with the roughness and brutality 
. of the people of the street, copying their vicious language 
and habits, and why they sometimes enter into lives of 
t crime. 

\ Juvenile delinquency is a serious matter among all the 

' nationalities whose children are being reared in the United 

States. Unquestionably one of the causes in the congested 

quarters, aside from that of parental lack of supervision, 

is the failure to provide a healthy outlet for the children. 

V Forced from the contracted habitations of one, two, or three 

I rooms into the streets, they get into various sorts of mis- 

* chief. The boys would gladly play baseball, basketball or 

• football in a park or playground nearby, but these are not 
nearby for most of them ; they cannot even play in their 

I own back yard, as their better-to-do brothers, and so they 
f use the street for their games, and must be on the lookout 
; for the '^ cop " who watches for the petty violation of 
-street ordinances. If they break a window, their fathers 
do not settle, they have no influence, and the boys are haled 
, before a mxagistrate or a court and dubbed juvenile crim- 
jinals. From being in the street, and kept from healthy 
' play, they are ' ' up to " all kinds of pranks, even the 
'serious one of stealing. If left unchecked the boys really 
become criminals. Any one who knows the conditions 
among the foreign nationalities, in a congested quarter of 
one of the great cities, realizes that it is the surroundings 
which are largely responsible for the misdeeds of boys and 
not in most cases the home surroundings so much as the 
. city environment in general. We know that among the 
Jewish population the parents of the delinquent are ordi- 
narily not criminals, but they are sometimes too weak to 
control the clfildren because of lack of clear understand- 
ing of their relations to our institutions. 

The juvenile court, which is becoming more and more 
recognized, has an important preventive influence, with its 
invaluable and indispensable co-operator, the system of pro- 



CONCLUSIONS 411 

bation officers, provides for siicli contingencies. The ju- 
venile delinquent is kept watch over by the probation officer 
and the parents at the same time become educated in the 
proper training of their children through the visits of this 
officer. If the surroundings of the child are bad in the 
judgment of the probation officer, the court will usually en- 
deavor to have it placed away from its home influences 
either by having it sent to be taken care of by another fam- 
ily, preferably in the country, or by committing it to an 
institution, either public or private. We lack in private 
institutions for delinquent children, and so they are fre- 
quently committed to a public one. 

It is to counteract low standards and degrading tend- 
encies, to conserve the Jewish moral and ethical ideals, and 
to help in the advance toward the highest types of citizen- 
ship that the educational, social and religious institutions 
and influences must come in. The implanting of principles 
of conduct and order according to the most elevated stand- 
ards of the land must be kept in mind. The supplying of 
means of play and recreation as an outlet to the activities of 
the young must always be considered. The population 
must be surrounded with healthful, attractive places of 
social gathering in the absence of such places in the home, 
and to counteract dangerous resorts to which young people, 
of any class, may easily be lured when not kept watch over. 
The necessity of providing preventive influences must be 
emphasized. A number of such have been established, but 
they are inadequate to cope with the conditions. Play 
grounds, vacation schools, the public schools, the settle- 
ments, educational societies, libraries, all help along this 
line, but the community of each city must be brought to 
realize the importance of greater effort. Such influences 
as have been adverted to take up groups and individuals, 
but their scope is necessarily limited, — very often the 
greater their limitations as to numbers, the better their in- 
fluence on the few with whom they come in contact. The 
Jewish population are susceptible of high development. 
The fact that they are massed together in large numbers in 
strange surroundings has caused them to lead an abnormal 
life. There must be a realization of the necessity of helping 
them to help themselves. Everything possible to improve 
their surroundings should be done, but whatever is done 
should be on the principle, not that the individuals are 



412 CONCLUSIONS 

being helped, but that the community life generally is being 
improved. 

* ' Of all men, ' ' says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu,^ ' ' the Rus- 
sian, once rid of his traditional ideas, of his national 
prejudice, is the most completely freed. In this respect, no 
other can be compared to him, but the Jew, the modern 
Israelite. He, too, at contact with aliens, passes from the 
extreme of the spirit of veneration to the extreme of free 
thinking, from the oriental traditionalism, to which the bulk 
of his brethren stubbornly cling, to the most daring feats of 
the spirit of innovation." When, therefore, we have the 
combination of the Russian, the intellectual Russian, and 
the Jew, the advanced Jew, we may not unexpectedly have 
a most radical resultant, and it ought not surprise us to 
find it in the United States, where the Jew can give full 
swing to his philosophical speculations. It is this extreme 
tendency which makes religious stability difficult and which 
forces upon us one of the most serious religious problems. 
The older generation fail to provide for the religion of their 
children. True, they maintain the forms, observe the cere- 
monies, celebrate the holy days and the holidays, attend the 
synagogue, but their children do not follow in their foot- 
steps. The opposition of two divergent influences, two dif- 
ferent environments, separates the two generations, and one 
cannot understand the other and will not yield to the de- 
mands of the other. The older generation who observe the 
religious laws and principles insist that the strict letter 
must be maintained. They have been brought up in a 
Ghetto secluded from the rest of the community, mingling 
with it for the purpose of making a livelihood whenever 
necessary, but returning to the community fold to follow 
the religious customs. The younger generation have been 
thrown into a world in which they are part of the larger 
community, with the same opportunities as all the rest, with 
no isolating laws, no restrictions. They have become part 
of the English-speaking Americans; their aspirations are 
those of the young people of the country. The shock of 
freedom has thrown many of them into a state of indiffer- 
ence, of nothingness, of intense reaction against the prac- 
tices of their fathers. To them the Hebrew chantings in 
the synagogue have no meaning ; the symbolism of the forms 

1 The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians, Vol. I, p. 123. 



CONCLUSIONS 413 

and ceremonies is lost; their intellects refuse to accept as 
religions that which seems fantastic. 

There are some who are endeavoring to find a point of 
worship which will be more in accord with the modern 
spirit, which will adopt an orderly service with the vernacu- 
lar as part of the language of prayer. The reform move- 
ment among the Jews of other classes who came here before 
the Russian immigration was the outcome of some such 
clash of ideas, but the Russian and Eastern European Jew- 
ish element has thus far shown but little evidence of fol- 
lowing along the lines of the German Jewish reform move- 
ment. 

In his description of the career of the late Chief Rabbi 
Joseph of New York, Abraham Cahan^ points out the quick 
changes and vicissitudes which have taken place among the 
religious activities of the Russian Jewish population, even 
among those of the older generation. He says: " Rabbi 
Joseph remained the man of the third century he had been 
brought up to be while his fellow country people, whom he 
came here to lead, were in hourly contact with the culture 
of the nineteenth century. A gap was yawning between 
the chief rabbi and his people, one which symbolized a 
most interesting chapter in the history of Israel, but which 
foreshadowed the tragedy of the newcomer's life in this 
country. ' ' 

This has reference to a growing change of attitude. So 
far as religious observances are concerned, the change is 
very much less formal among the older than among the 
younger generation ; it is of slower growth and more subtle ; 
but it indicates an evolution of Russian and Polish 
Israel in America which will be sanctioned; it presages 
a Judaism away from the strict ritualism of the Ghetto, re- 
fined by modern life and conditions. 

There are thus, from the religious standpoint, several 
strata of immigrant Jews in this country: Those of the 
type of Rabbi Joseph, who cannot adjust themselves ; those 
of the older generation who are gradually diverging from 
the ritualistic injunctions, though generally maintaining 
outward form and ceremony; the younger generation who 
are dissatisfied with the synagogal conditions of their elders, 
and who want a service and observance with the English 
language as a medium and the exposition of Jewish ideals 

' American Monthly Review of Reviews, September, 1902. 



414 CONCLUSIONS 

in the light of modern conditions; and finally, the class 
who are radicals and iconoclasts of various types standing 
at present aloof from the synagogal fold. 

For those who occupy more or less of a middle ground 
there is the possibility of what, for want of a better designa- 
tion, may be called a young people's modern synagogue. 
The attempts to graft this on the religious life and action 
are in their incipiency, and any judgment as to their per- 
manent possibility is mere guess work. With young, gifted, 
enthusiastic leaders, sprung from the class for which spir- 
itual provision is to be made, it would seem that there is 
sufficient fertile religious soil from which a sound growth 
can be produced. But, unfortunately, there has thus far 
been a lack of such leaders, and hence the would-be fol- 
lowers have found it difficult to gather on common ground. 
Those who have the religious welfare of the immigrant 
population at heart must concentrate on plans to plant con- 
gregations of the young people, with an English and He- 
brew service and an English-speaking rabbi — not a re- 
form service of the advanced type necessarily, but one that 
would make the break between the old and the new not 
sharp and sudden. These are vague terms, but the condi- 
tions in the communities are such that it is impossible to 
give in express, tangible terms a general remedy for the 
religious ills. 

A people with restless energy, shrewd insight, breadth 
of view, intense intellectual initiative, moral strength, spir- 
itual power, — some of these qualities latent because of 
lack of opportunity — are thrown into an atmosphere in 
America for which they are well fitted and in which they 
would make great advance if they had not to struggle at 
first with severe economic necessity. The struggle is fierce 
in certain quarters and during the struggle some untoward 
results follow. Coming here hampered and trying to ad- 
just themselves, they must strive in a way which those long 
settled here cannot appreciate. It is our business to im- 
prove the conditions surrounding them, and to whatever 
extent we help them they will profit. They are bound to 
rise no matter how great the difficulties. All who know 
the stuff of which they are made have no fear that from the 
grinding process there wdll rise men and women of the 
highest types of citizenship, business and professional men 
of high grade, poets, scholars, scientific workers in many 
fields. I am glad to have confirmation of my observations 



CONCLUSIONS 415 

in the following by Dr. Emil G. Hirsch :^ ' * We have no 
doubt that the new day about to break will show the Russian 
American Jew as a man of power, with mind well stocked 
and judgment well trained, with sympathies well refined 
for all that is good, true, and noble, with loyalty most in- 
tense for the best that America calls its own ; a citizen well 
worthy of the prerogative, of the sovereignty which Ameri- 
can citizenship confers; a Jew deeply conscious of the 
beauty, the reasonableness of his faith, the historic beauty 
that birth from Jewish parents imposes." 

* Singer, Russia at the Bar of the American People, p. XXIX. 



A 




-> 



) 



EEADING LIST 

GENERAL 

Adler, Cyrus, Ed. American Jewish Year Book. 1899- 

1905. 6 vols. Philadelphia, 1899-1904. 
The Voice of America on Kishineff. Philadelphia, 

1904. 
Antin, Mary. From Plotzk to Boston. Boston, 1899. 
Besant, Sir Walter. East London. New York, 1901. 
Booth, Charles. Life and Labor of the People. 9 vols. 

London, 1891-97. 
Bradshaw, F., and Emanuel Charles. Alien Immigration. 

London, 1904. 
Brandenburg", Broughton. Imported Americans. New 

York, 1904. 
Burnet, John, and Schloss, David F. Reports to the Board 

of Trade on Alien Immigration to America. London, 

1893. 
Bushee, Frederick A. Ethnic Factors in the Population 

of Boston. New York and London, 1903. (Publications 

of the American Economic Association). 
Davitt, Michael. Within the Pale: The True Story of 

Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia. New York, 1903. 
Errara, Leo. The Russian Jews. Translated from the 

French. London, 1894. 
de Forest, Robert W., and Veiller, Lawrence, Ed. The 

Tenement House Problem. 2 vols. New York and Lon- 
don, 1903. 
Frederic, Harold. The New Exodus: A Study of Israel 

in Russia. New York and London, 1892. 
Ganz, Hugo. The Land of Riddles ( Russia of To-day). 

New York, 1904. 
Gordon, Wm. E. Evans-. The Alien Immigrant. London, 

1903. Jewish immigration to Great Britain referred to. 
Gould, E. R. L. The Housing of the Working People. 

Washington, 1895. (U. S. Commissioner of Labor. 

Eighth Special Report). 

416 



BEADING LIST 417 

Orer:t Britain Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. 
Minutes of Evidence and Report. 4 vols. London, 1904, 

Hapgood, Hutehins. The Spirit of the Ghetto. New York, 
1903. 

Henderson, Charles R., Ed. Modern Methods of Charity. 
New York and London, 1904. 

Hull House Maps and Papers. A Presentation of Nation- 
alities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago. 
By Residents of Hull House. New York and Boston. 
1895. ' 

Hunter, Robert, Ed. Tenement Conditions in Chicago. 
Report by the Investigating Committee of the City 
Homes Association. Chicago, 1901. 

Jewish Encyclopedia, The. Agricultural Colonies in Rus- 
sia—Agricultural Colonies in the United States— Alli- 
ance, N. J. — America — Anti-Semitism — Austria— Bes- 
sarabia— Bohemia — Charity— Chicago — Cossacks ' Upris- 
ing— Drama, Yiddish— Galicia—Hirsch (Baron de) Fund 
— Hassidism — Hungary— Jewish Colonization Associa- 
tion — Jud^o-German — Judaeo-German Literature— Lith- 
uania— May Laws— Migration— New York City— Pale of 
Settlement — Philadelphia — Roumania — Russia— United 
States. 12 vols. New York and London, 1901-1905. 

Jones, Thomas J. The Sociology of a New York City Block. 
New York, 1904. (Columbia University Studies in Po- 
litical Science). 

Lazare, B. Anti-Semitism : its History and Causes. Trans- 
lated from the French. New York, 1903. 

Leroy-Beaulieu, Anatole. The Empire of the Tsars and 
the Russians. Translated from the French. 3 vols. New 
York and London, 1893. 

Morals, Henry S. The Jews of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 

Mew Jersey Bureau of Statistics. Jewish Colonies of New 

Jersey. Camden, 1901. 
New York City Tenement House Department. First Report. 

1902-1903. 2 vols. New York, 1904. 
Riis, Jacob A. The Battle with the Slum. New York, 

1902. 
Ripley, William Z. The Races of Europe. New York, 

1899. 
Russell, C, and Lewis, H. S. The Jew in London: A 

Study of Racial Character and Present-Day Conditions. 

New York and London, 1900. 



418 BEADING LIST 

Eusso-Jewish Committee of London. The Persecution of 
the Jews in Russia. Philadelphia, 1890. 

San-Donato, Prince Demidoff. The Jewish Question in 
Russia. Translated from the Russian. London, 1894. 

Singer, Isidore, Ed. Russia at the Bar of the American 
People. New York and London, 1904. 

Smith, Richmond Mayo. Emigration and Immigration. 
New York, 1890. 

United States Industrial Commission. Immigration and 
Education. Report, Vol. XV. Washington, 1901. 

White, Arnold. The Modern Jew. London, 1899. 

Wiener, Leo. The History of Yiddish Literature in the 
Nineteenth Century. New York, 1899. 

Willett, Mabel Hurd. The Employment of Women in the 
Clothing Trade. New York, 1902. (Columbia Univer- 
sity Studies in Political Science). 

Woods, Robert A., Ed. The City Wilderness: A Settle- 
ment Study by Residents and Associates of the South 
End House. South End, Boston. Boston, 1898. 

Americans in Process : A Settlement Study by Res- 
idents and Associates of the South End House. North 
and West Ends, Boston. Boston, 1902. 

Wright, Carroll D. The Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New 
York and Philadelphia. Washington, 1894. (U. S. 
Commissioner of Labor. Seventh Special Report). 

FICTION 

Bernstein, Herman. In the Gates of Israel. New York, 

1902. Stories of the Inmiigrant Jew in the United 

States. 
Brudno, Ezra S. The Fugitive: Being Memoirs of a 

Wanderer in Search of a Home. New York, 1904. 
Cahan, Abraham. Yekl : A Tale of the New York Ghetto. 

New York, 1896. 
The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories of the 

New York Ghetto. Boston, 1898. 
Kelly, Myra. Little Citizens : The Humors of School Life. 

New York, 1903. 
Richards, Bernard G. Discourses of Keidansky. New 

York, 1903. 
Rosenfeld, Morris. Songs from the Ghetto. With Prose 

Translation, Glossary and Introduction by Leo Wiener. 

Boston, 1898. 



READING LIST 419 

Zangwill, Israel. The Children of the Ghetto: A Study 
of a Peculiar People. Philadelphia, 1892. New York, 
1895. 

REPORTS OF SOCIETIES 

Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants. 

Philadelphia. 
College Settlements Association. New York, Philadelphia, 

and Boston. 
Educational Alliance. New York. 

Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society of America. Chicago. 
Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society. New York. 
National Conference of Jewish Charities. New York. 
United Hebrew Charities. New York. 
University Settlement. New York. 



PERIODICALS 

Austin, 0. P. Is the New Immigration Dangerous to the 
Country? North American Review, April, 1904. 178: 
558. 

Brudno, Ezra S. The Emigrant Jew at Ilome. World's 
Work, February, 1904. 7 : 4471. 

The Russian Jew Americanized, World's Work, 

March, 1904. 7 : 4555. 

Baker, Ray Stannard. The Rise of the Tailors. McClure's 

Magazine, December, 1904. 24: 126. 
Cahan, Abraham. Jewish Massacres and the Revolutionary 

Movement in Russia. North American Review, July, 

1903. 177: 49. 

Claghorn, Kate H. Our Immigrants and Ourselves. Atlan- 
tic Monthly, October, 1900. 36 : 535. 

Immigration in its Relation to Pauperism. Annals 

of the Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 

1904. 24:187. 

Dyche, J. A. The Jewish Immigrant in England. Con- 
temporary Review, March, 1899. 75 : 379. 

Jewish Workmen in England. Contemporary Re- 
view, January, 1898. 73: 35. 

Falkner, Roland P. Some Aspects of the Immigration 
Problem. Political Science Quarterly, March, 1904. 
19 : 32. 



420 BEADING LIST 

Fishberg, M. Russian Jews in America. American Monthly 
Review of Reviews, September, 1902. 26: 315. 

Ford, Alexander Hume. The Eusso-American Jew. Pear- 
son's Magazine, Octofo, 1903. 10: 233. 

Friedenberg, Albert M. The Problem of Jewish Immi- 
gration. Jewish Comment, February 6, 1903. 

Gaster, M. The Jews in Roumania. North American 
Review, November, 1902. 175 : 664. 

Giddings, Franklin H. Sociological Questions. Forum, 
October-December, 1903. 35 : 245. 

Hourwich, Isaac A. The Persecution of the Jews. Forum, 
August, 1891. 11 : 611. 

Mathews, B. C. A Study in Nativities. Forum, January, 
1899. 26: 621. 

Michaud, Gustav. What Shall We Be? Century, March, 
1903. 65 : 683. Comment on Above. F. H. Giddings, 
Century, March, 1903. 

Ripley, William Z. Race Factors in Labor Unions. Atlan- 
tic Monthly, March, 1904. 93 : 299. 

Sargent, Frank P. Problems of Immigration. Annals of 
the Academy of Political and Social Science. July, 1904. 
24: 153. 

Steiner, Edw. A. The Russian and Polish Jew in New 
York. Outlook. November, 1902. 72: 528. 

Van Etten, Ida M. Russian Jews as Desirable Immigrants. 
Foriim. April, 1893. 15 : 172. 

White, Arnold. ** A Typical Alien Immigrant,*' Contem- 
porary Review. February, 1898. 73: 241. 



Charities. Weekly. New York. 

Charity Work. February, 1902, to July-August, 1903. 

New York. 
Jewish Charity. From October, 1903. Monthly. New 

York. 



INDEX 



Actors, Yiddish, 229, 250 

Agricultural settlements, in New 
Jersey, 37, 376-88, 407; in New 
England States, 388-91, 407; in 
Western States, 392-402, 407 

Agriculture, in Poland, 27; in Rus- 
sia, 37 

Alfred Corning Clark House, New 
York, 47 

Alliance, N. J., 377-88 

Amusements. See Social life 

Anarchists, 266, 272 

Anshe Kenesseth Israel Congrega- 
tion, Chicago, 58 

Anshe Maariv Congregation, Chicago, 
57-58 

Arbitration, 354, 360 

Artists, East Side New York, Exhi- 
bition of, 193 

Assimilation with American life, 33- 
34, 67, 73, 75, 107, 219, 234, 254, 
256. 283, 302, 414 

Associated Jewish Charities, Chicago, 
88 

Association for the Protection of 
Jewish Immigrants, Philadelphia, 
55, 79-80, 84 

Bamberger, Prof. G., cited, 211 

Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School, 
Woodbine, N. J., 382 

Baron de Hirsch Fund, 55, 65, 72, 
81, 377 

Baron de Hirsch Trade School, New 
York, 194, 195 

Baths, 287, 306-08, 322, 324. See 

, also Housing 

Beth Israel Hospital, New York, 71— 
72 

Billings, J. S., cited, 293, 299 

Blaustein, David, cited, 155n 

B'nai B'rith, distribution of immi- 
grants by, 368 

B'nai B'rith Manual Training School, 
Philadelphia. 206 



Bohemians, death rate of, in New 
York, 293; diseases among, in New 
York, 299 

B'rith milah. See Circumcision 

Brownsville, N, Y., 43, 67 

Bureau of Personal Service, Chi- 
cago, 88, 92, 93, 99 

Burial, 331 

Burial societies. 72, 85, 95, 174 

Byalistock, Russia, 26 

Cafes, East Side New York, 222-24 

Candle tax in Russia, 23 

Carmel, N. J., 377-88 

Central Russian Refugee Committee, 
65 

Ceremonies, Jewish, 40, 157, 160, 157, 
160, 222, 287. See also Religious 
influences 

Charity. See Philanthropy 

Chasdai ibn Shaprut, Jewish diplo- 
mat, 18 

Chassidism, influence of, 15 

Chedarim. See Schools 

Chevras. See Congregations; Relief 
societies. 

Chicago, map of West Side of, 66; 
Jews in, 58 

Chicago Hebrew Institute, 181 

Chicago Woman's Aid, 90 

Child labor, 120 

Child labor law of Illinois, 141 

Children. See Young people 

Chmielnicki, Bogdan, 20 

Christian missions to the Jews, 155 

Circumcision, 48, 331 

Citizenship, 35, 39, 40, 67, 256, 268, 
276, 277, 279 

Coffee, use of, 291 

Clara de Hirsch Home for Work- 
ing Girls, New York, 195 

Clothing industry, 109-10, 119-20, 
128-30, 189, 141, 406 

Clubs, Young people's, 197, 198, 217, 
232, 360 



421 



422 



INDEX 



Cohen, Dr. ^. Solis-, cited, 316-17 

College Settlement, New York, 193 

College Settlement, Philadelphia, 206, 
208 

Congregations, number of, Philadel- 
phia, 54, 84; New York, 155; Chi- 
cago, 174 

Contagious diseases, immunity from, 
298, 311 

Cossack massacre, 19, 20 

Council of Jewish Women, Chicago 
Section, 180 

Council of Jewish Women, Philadel- 
phia Section, 169 

Courland, Jews in, 26 

Crime. 39, 55, 73, 337-41, 344-47, 
356-58, 362 

Darrow, Clarence S., election of, 278 
Davidson, Thomas, influence of, 193 
Davies, Anna F., cited, 208 
Death rate, 35, 59. 292-93, 299 
Degeneracy, absence of, 67 
Delinquency, juvenile, 73, 92-93, 348, 

358-59, 410 
Density of population, 44, 283-84 

292, 304 
Dinwiddie. Emily W., cited, 308 
Diseases, 73, 294-99, 311-17, 328- 

31 
Distribution of Jewish immigrants, 74 

118-21, 366-73, 407 
Double-decker tenement. See Hous 

ing 
"Dumb-bell" tenement. See Hous 

ing 
Drama, Yiddish, 227-28, 230, 235 

250-52 
Drug habits, absence of, 291 
Drunkenness, absence of, 67, 222 

223, 240, 289, 290, 303, 310, 312 

319. 320. 386 



Eastern Penitentiary, Philadelphia 

358 
Economic condition of Jews, in Rus 

sia, 21, 25-27, 30; in United 

States, 102-46 
Economic influences, 102-46 
Economic progress of Jews In United 

States, 55, 60, 66, 114, 135, 406 
Educational Alliance, New York, 47, 

192 
Educational Alliance, Philadelphia, 209 
Education, 15, 88, 60, 184-219, 408-09 



Education, Board of. New York, 

public lectures, 193 
Education of Jews in Russia, 80-24, 

33; of rabbis, 22; of Lithuanian 

Jews, 27 
Emerson, influence of, 155, 156 
Ethical Culture, Society for. East 

Side Branch, 153-54 

Factories in the New Jersey set- 
tlements. 379, 381, 382, 384 

Factory system as a substitute for 
sweatshops, 117, 127, 134, 145 

Fairbanks, Hon. Charles W., cited, 
38. 

Family, size of, 286, 305. 

Famines, in Russia, 80 

Federation of Jewish Charities, Phil- 
adelphia, 81-82 

Food, 59, 288, 289, 391 

Foreign-born, comparison of, 285, 
287-88, 293 

Foreign influence in Russia, 28, 29 

Frankel, L. K., cited, 118, 300 

Free burial societies. See Burial so- 
cieties 

Free loan societies. See Loan socie- 
ties 

Gemilus Chasodim. See Loan socie- 
ties 

Germans, in Philadelphia, 52 

Ghettos, European, insanitary con- 
dition of, 282 

Ghetto, New York, 49; Philadelphia, 
56; Chicago, 60 

Gordin, Jacob, 228, 230 

Hachnosas Orchim. See Sheltering 

Home 
Hebrew Charity Ball Association, 

Philadelphia, 81 
Hebrew Education Society, Philadel- 
phia, 123, 206 
Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, 64, 

877, 378 
Hebrew Free School, Chicago, 174, 

214 
Hebrew Free School, Philadelphia, 

167 
Hebrew High School, Philadelphia, 

167 
Hebrew Relief Association, Chicago, 

87 
Hebrew Technical Institute, New 

York, 194 



INDEX 



423 



Hebrew Technical School for Girls, 

New York, 196 
Hebrew Literature Society, Phila- 
delphia, 168, 209 
Hebrew Literary Association, Chicago, 

177, 181, 218, S53 
Hebrew Sunday School Society, Phil- 
adelphia, 207 
Heilprin, Michael, 377 
Henry Booth House, Chicago, 214, 

217 
Holidays, 40, 204, 206 
Home for Aged, New York, 72 
Home for Aged, Philadelphia, 85 
Home for Hebrew Orphans, Phila- 
delphia, 86 
Home for Jewish Friendless and 

Working Girls, Chicago, 88, 91 
Home for Jewish Orphans, Chicago, 

88, 91 
Home of Delight, Philadelphia, 206-07 
Homes for Aged, Chicago, 88, 91, 

174-75 
Homes for Working Girls, 91, 195 
Hospitals, 72, 78, 85, 89 
House of Refuge, New York, 73 
House of Refuge, Philadelphia, 359 
Housing, New York, 44-46, 72, 73, 
284-88; Philadelphia, 45-47, 55, 59, 
75, 304-10; Chicago, 172, 319-32 
Hull House, Chicago, 60, 214, 217 
Hungarians, in Philadelphia, 52, 53 
Hurwitz (Horowitz), M. H., 227 



Immigrants, distribution of, 74, 118^ 
121, 366-73 

Immigration, 159, 367-71 

Immigration, Jewish, Austrian, 66; 
Galician, 66; German, 12; Rou- 
manian, 57, 66, 367; Russian, 57, 
64-66, 76, 77, 80, 83, 84, 87; to 
United States, 10-14 

Individualism, 11-12, 15-16, 137, 
149-150 

Industrial Removal Office, 368-72 

Insanity, 295, 329-30 

Insurance, 133, 252 

Intellectual life, 13, 54, 60, 232, 408. 
See also Education 

Intemperance. Sae Drunkenness 

Irish, death rate of, in New York, 
293; diseases among in New York, 
299, 301; in Philadelphia, 53 

Italians, death rate of, in New York, 



293; diseases among, in New York, 
299, 301; in Philadelphia, 52, 53 

Jacobs, Joseph, cited, 102, 282 

James Forten Elementary Manual 
Training School, Philadelphia, 205, 
206 

Jewish Agricultural and Aid Society, 
New York, 399 

Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society, 
Chicago, 393, 396, 401, 403 

Jewish Endeavor Society, New York, 
153 

Jewish Endeavor Society, Philadel- 
phia, 168 

Jewish Foster Home, Philadelphia, 
76, 78 

Jewish Hospital, Philadelphia, 76, 78 

Jewish law, 352 

Jewish Maternity Association, Phila- 
delphia, 76, 78 

Jewish Protectory and Aid Society, 
New York, 349 

Jewish Seaside Home, Atlantic City, 
N. J., 79 

Jewish Training School, Chicago, 60, 
180, 213 

Jews, expulsion of, 19, 77, 83; ho- 
mogeneity of, 15-17, 20 

Jews in Lithuania, 19, 26 

Jews in Poland, 19, 27 

Jews in Russia, 18-31 

Jews in United States, German, 11- 
14; Hungarian, 13; Polish, 13; 
Russian, 14; Spanish-Portuguese, 
10-11; type of, 15; future of, 16 

Jews, number of, in Chicago, 58; in 
New York, 102; in Philadelphia, 
52n 

Joseph, Jewish King of the Khozars, 
18 

Judaism. See Religious influences 

Judelson, Jacob, 79 

Juvenile delinquency, 73, 92-93, 348, 
358-59, 410 

Kant, followers of, 155, 156 

Khozars, 18-19 

Kindergartens, 205, 214 

King, Edward, influence of, 193 

Kosher. See Food 

Kossuth's revolution, consequences 

of, 12 
Krauskopf, Rev. Dr. Joseph, 169 



424 



INDEX 



Ladies* Hebfew Emergency Society, 

Philadelphia, 86 
Ladino, 19 

Lassalle Club, Chicago, 218 
Lateiner, Joseph, 328 
Ledger, Philadelphia, cited, 276 
Legal Aid Society, New York, 343 
Leroy-BeauUeu, Anatole, cited, 283, 

296, 412 
Lessing Club, Chicago, 60, 253 
Lessing Self Educational Club, Chi- 
cago, 254 
Libraries, 198, 210 
Lilienthal, Dr., agent of Russian 

government for education of Jews, 

22 
Lithuania, Jews in, 19 
Lithuanian Jews as educators, 26 
Lithuanians, in Philadelphia, 52, 53 
Litigation, 341-44, 349, 352-56, 360 
Liverpool plan of charity federation, 

82 
Loan societies, 71, 85, 151, 174; 

working of* 96-99 
Lodgers, 286, 320, 321 
Lodges, 84, 171, 181, 252 
Lodz, Russia, enterprise of, 27 
Longevity, 35, 59, 286, 293 

Manual training, 189, 206, 207, 214 
Marriage and divorce, 357, 361 
Marriages, consanguineous, as causes 

of disease, 297; early, 319 
Maskilim, educators, 22-23 
Maxwell Street Settlement, Chicago, 

88, 214, 217 
May regulations, 56, 77 
Meat tax, 289 

Medicine, study of, 106, 107, 133 
Mendelssohn, influence of, 22 
Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, 88, 

89 
Middle class, place of Jews in, 25, 30 
Millionaires, 103 
Moguelesco, Sigmund, 228 
Montefiore, Sir Moses, in Russia, 22 
Morality, Jewish, 73, 242, 253, 332, 

346-47, 357 
Moscow, Russia, expulsion from, 27, 

77, 83 
Moses Montefiore Hebrew Free 

School, Chicago, 177 
Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, 72 
Mount Sinai Hospital, Philadelphia, 



Music, and drama, 251; interest in, 

196 
Mutual aid societies, 84 

National Farm School, Doylestown, 
Pa., 387 

Native born, in Philadelphia, 53; dis- 
eases among, in New York, 219 

Negroes, in Philadelphia, 52 

New Jersey, Jews in, 43; agricul- 
tural settlements in, 376-88 

New York, East Side, map of, 42; 
Jewish population of, 62, 102; 
wages in, 119-20 

Nurses' Settlement, New York, 193 

Octavia Hill Association, Philadel- 
phia, 304, 308 
Odessa, Russia, Jews in, 26 
Orphan asylums, 72, 78, 86, 91 
Orphans* Guardians, Philadelphia, 76, 

78 
Ouvaroflf, Count, efforts of, in be- 
half of education, 22 

Pale of Jewish Settlement, 25, 77, 157 

Patriotism, 39, 187 

Persecution of Russian Jews, cause 
of, 21, 29 

Personal Interest Society, Philadel- 
phia, 81 

Philadelphia, map of southeastern 
section of, 50; area of, 51; Jewish 
population of, 51-52n, 76, 353; na- 
tionalities in, 52—53 

Philadelphia County Prison, 358 

Philanthropy, 55, 62-99 

People's Singing Classes, 196 

Playgrounds, 47, 73, 190 

Playwrights, Yiddish, 227, 228 

Pobiedonostseff, policy of, 21 

Podolia, Russia, Jews in, 26 

Poles, in Philadelphia, 52, 53 

Politics, 38-39, 256-79 

Poor, Jewish, American born, 63 

Poverty, causes of among Jews, 67; 
in small towns of Russia, 27 

Press, influence of, 33-34, 60, 262, 
385 

Prisons, New York, 345-46 

Professions, 106-07, 124, 183, 143, 
407 

Public opinion in Russia, 2S 

Population. See Density of popula- 
tion 



INDEX 



425 



Rabbinical seminaries in Russia, 22- 
24 

Rabbis, in Russia, 22, 163; in United 
States, 150, 164, 179 

Real estate, 46, 104, 133, 172, 354, 
361 

Relief, adequate, 68; material, by con- 
gregations, 175 

Relief societies, 63-71, 76, 84-86, 87, 
88, 90, 174. See also United He- 
brew Charities 

Religious customs, 40, 157, 222 

Religious influences, 148-82, 412-415 

Removal to various parts of New 
York, 43, 74, 105 

Rents, 286, 305, 306, 309 

Revenue, farmers of, 18 

Riesman, Dr. David, cited, 311-16 

Riots, anti-Jewish, 77 

Ripley, W. Z., cited, 293 

Rosenhayn, N. J., 377-88 

Roumanian Educational Society, Phil- 
adelphia, 86 

Roumanian Jewish immigration, 66 

Russia, Jews in, 18-31 

Russia, reform in, 25; influence of 
foreign thought in, 28-29; charac- 
ter of people in, 20-21, 28-29; 
economic progress of, 30-31 

Russian Transportation Fund, 65 

Sabbath, 160, 179, 222, 386 
Sanitation, 136, 172, 282-333 
Sargent, Hon. Frank P., cited, 369- 

70 
School houses, public, in New York, 

44 
Schools, Hebrew, 150, 165-67. 173- 

74, 177-78, 205, 384 
Schools, public, attendance at, 54, 

90-92, 16G, 185, 200-02, 205, 211- 

12, 384, 408; scholarship in, 186, 

188, 202, 203, 213 
Self Educational Club, Chicago, 177, 

181, 218 . 
Seligman, Jesse, Banquet, 65 
Settlements, social, 47, 193-194, 208, 

217, 232 
Sheltering Home, Chicago, 174 
Sheltering Home, Philadelphia, 55, 

84-85 
Sigismund August, King of Poland, 

19 
Sinai Congregation, Chicago, 58, 180 
Sisterhoods. 69 



Socialists, 28, 138, 197, 224, 261, 266, 

267, 279 
Social life, 47, 48, 55, 60, 67, 222- 

54, 385, 409, 411 
Stature, 282 

Street influence, 48, 55, 73 
Strikes, 34 
Stuyvesant, Governor, Jewish poor in 

time of, 62 
Suicide, 298 
Sweatshops, 36, 116-17, 124-26, 136, 

138; factory system as a substitute 

for, 117, 127, 134, 140, 145 
Synagogue, a centre of social life, 

40, 150, 249 

Talmud Torah. See Schools, He- 
brew 
Teadrinking, prevalence of, 291, 310 
Technical education, 123, 146, 194, 

215-16, 407 
Temperance. See Drunkenness 
Tenement house commissions, cited, 

284, 285, 291, 292 
Theatre benefits, 229-30, 252 
Theatre, Yiddish, 226, 227, 235, 250- 

53 
Tobacco, use of, 290, 310 
Town dwellers, Jews as, 283, 296, 366 
Trades, 60, 108-15, 122-33, 143-45, 

305, 309, 407 
Trade unions, 34, 115, 116, 134, 137- 

41 
Tuberculosis, treatment of, 70, 300, 

302, 316 

United Garment Workers of Amer- 
ica, 134 

United Hebrew Charities, Chicago, 
88-89 

United Hebrew Charities, New York, 
63-66, 68-70 

United Hebrew Charities, Philadel- 
phia, 55, 76-78, 80 

University Settlement, New York, 
47, 93 

University towns of Europe, Russian 
Jews in, 38 

Volosin, rabbinical seminary in, 23, 

166 
Voting, independence in, 251, 261, 

262, 265, 276 
Volhynia, Russia, Jews in, 26 



426 



INDEX 



Wages, 113, 119-21, 128-33, 138-45 
Warsaw, Russia, rabbinical seminary 

in, 23 
Weddings, 222, 243-44, 249, 254 
Wilna, Russia, rabbinical seminary 

in, 22 
Women's labor, 120 
Woodbine, N. J., 377-88 
Working girls. Homes for, 91, 195 
Work rooms for poor women, 69, 

90, 93 

Yeshibahs. See Rabbinical seminaries 
Young Men's Charity Association, 
Chicago, 95 



Young Men's Hebrew Union, Phila- 
delphia, 168, 209 

Young people, attitude and needs of, 
48, 49, 153, 155-56, 170-71, 176, 
179, 181-82, 251, 359, 385, 409-14 
See also Religious influences; So- 
cial life 

Young Women's Union, Philadelphia, 
205, 207 

Zionism, 16, 29, 37, 155, 168, 232, 

253 
Zion, Order Knights of, 177, 180, 

181, 253 
Zitomir, rabbinical seminary in, 22 
Zueblin, Prof. Charles, cited, 57, 59 



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